Author: jkirkby8712

This commentary refers to three very different books, though with a strong emphasis on history.

• ‘The Keeper of Miracles’ [Phillip Maisel];
• ‘Pride of Place: Exploring the Grimwade Collection’; and,
• Famous Visitors: To A Famous City, by Doug Bradby.

‘The Keeper of Miracles’ The memoir of a Holocaust survivor keeping alive the stories of his generation” by Phillip Maisel, published in 2020, 214 pages.  This was a  confronting book, but something that it is important, that current and future generations should not be allowed to forget.

Prior to writing this commentary, I posted a selection of quotations from the book, for the interest of my readers, as follows;

Some quotations to reflect upon:.

• ‘My job was to carry bags of cement and rails across to the site where they were building a narrow-gauge railway…The bags weighed twenty kilograms each, and I was already so weak from hunger I could barely lift them. If I were to stumble or fall, I would be shot on sight’.
• ‘More than three-quarters of a century after the Holocaust, the suffering of loved ones haunts me far more than the suffering I personally experienced’.
• ‘To have children  is the greatest joy a person can experience in life, and this fact is not lost on any survivor of the Holocaust. Hitler, and the hatred he inspired, tried to murder me and everyone like me.  He failed, and when I brought a child into the world, it was the only sensible   countermeasure to that kind of hatred. Love……To hold my daughters in my arms the day they were born.  To walk them to school on their first day, to walk them down the aisle on their wedding day. These moments are wonderful in the life of any parent, but imagine how precious they are to us survivors. When we were starving, freezing, and being tortured for no reason beyond hatred and prejudice, who could have imagined that life could be so good?’
• ‘But our suffering does not have to be in vain. The world must learn not to succumb to fear and hatred, not to allow cynical propagandists to commit atrocities in the name of belief…….I hope that now, my story will become part of yours. This is my greatest wish: to educate, to give people the tools they need to walk away from hatred.’

The only written response I received to these quotations stated that  “It’s a pity the author’s and his countrymen’s self-pity doesn’t extend to their near neighbours”

I was not 100% certain what the writer was getting at, and I didn’t ask –  I assume it was a reference to the current State of Israel and that nation’s attitude to it’s Palestinian ‘neighbours’ – that, if the case, I had some agreement with. However the words suggesting self-pity by the author – well I felt that was an offense to all current survivors to suggest they were indulging in self-pity – the aim of the book was to remind the world and future generations of the  unthinkable stories of triumph and tragedy, cruelty and hope – to demonstrate the cathartic power of storytelling, and to never underestimate the impact of human kindness balanced against human cruelties.  And to compare these survivors of Hitler’s hatred with the leaders of the current Israel nation is completely an unnecessary comparison – none of those leaders were likely even alive during World War II, and they would probably have almost as little true understanding of what happened, as we here on the other side of the world do..

Putting that aside, for or more than 30 years, Phillip Maisel worked selflessly to record the harrowing stories of Holocaust survivors.  Volunteering at Melbourne’s Jewish Holocaust Centre, Phillip listened tirelessly to their memories, preserved their voices and proven, and  time and time again, revealed just how healing storytelling can be. Each testimony of survival is a miracle in itself – earning Phillip the nickname ‘the Keeper of Miracles’.  But, for Phillip, confronting and overcoming trauma is also personal. A Holocaust survivor himself, he, too, has unthinkable stories of triumph and tragedy, cruelty and hope……………………………………

Published as Phillip turns 99, he said   ‘This is my responsibility and my privilege: to be custodian of their memories, to be able to pass their stories on to the next generation – for me, this will be the greatest miracle of all”.

From the Epilogue to his book, Maisel writes:

:It is important to remember that when we talk about the Holocaust, it is not only the history of what happened to the Jews. There were millions of victims from other religions, ethnic groups and minorities. It is their history too, all of the victims, as well as the history of the perpetrators and the collaborators. Each of their stories becomes a part of mine” [p. 209]

 ‘Pride Of Place’: Exploring the Grimwade Collection, edited by Alisa Bunbury: published in 2020:  Copy No. 193; 282 pages, my attention  initially drawn to the book from a review in the August issue  of Australian Book Review.  Russell Grimwade was born in 1879, less than fifty years after Europeans first settled in what was to become Victoria. His father was one half of the highly successful chemical and drug company Felton and Grimwade, formed in 1867.

This was another highly interesting ‘Coffee Table’ style book full of early Australian [European] history covering a whole range of genres – I guess like myself [though on a much smaller and cheaper scale] Grimwade was a collector with a broad spectrum of interests. Throughout the book, I continued to go back to my own situation, especially in relation to my own extensive book collection, and my thoughts about how I wanted to preserve that collection, beyond my passing!

Of special interest  to me were the sections relating to the early settlement years and beyond of Melbourne and district, and some of the early photos, eg, the 1855 depiction of ‘The City of Melbourne’, a hand-coloured etching and engraving painting [p.129] –  created less than twelve months after my Australian ancestors were married in the top end of Bourke Street, shown on the extreme right-hand side of the picture.

I was also interested in the descriptions and comments about the Victorian Black Thursday fires of 6 February, 1851 ‘which burnt perhaps one quarter of the nascent colony of Victoria’ [p.194-195]. The Suttie side of the family were up in the Boort area at the time and had recollections of that time.   Meanwhile, the artist, William Strutt [whose work is referred to at various stages in describing the Grimwade Collection] was quoted as recalling those fires  –  “ The heat had become so terrific early in the day that one felt almost unable  to move. At the breakfast table…was melted into oil, and bread…turned to rusk…Everything felt hot to the touch, even the window panes in the shade…The sun looked red all day, almost as blood, and the sky the colour of mahogany. We felt in town that something terrible [with the immense volumes of smoke] must be going on up country and sure enough messenger after messenger came flocking in with tales of distress and horror” [p.194].

The book also includes references and collections relating to Cook’s journals of his three voyages, accounts of early European discoveries, and the exploration and settlement of the Australian continent, and the early years of Victoria’s settlement and development.

In any case, the variety of interests which formed the basis of Grimwade’s collection was best described in an article from the Melbourne University Press, of 1^st December 2020. [and also reprinted in The Australian Arts Review of the 4^th February, 2021]:

‘The Russell and Mab Grimwade Bequest comprises a rich and sometimes unexpected variety of art, books and objects. A scientist, businessman and philanthropist, Sir Russell had wide-ranging interests embracing industry, history and botany. In all of these he was strongly supported by his wife Mab. The core of the bequest is Russell’s collection of visual and textual material, which provides a perspective on the European exploration of the Pacific and the British colonisation and settlement of Australia. His keen interest resulted in an extensive body of prints, drawings, watercolours and books, as well as oil paintings, decorative arts and personal records. These are jointly housed by the University of Melbourne’s Ian Potter Museum of Art, Special Collections (Library) and University Archives. Pride of Place is the first publication to explore the diversity of this remarkable collection. In this beautifully illustrated book, numerous experts share their interpretations of its highlights, responding to past historical attitudes and offering twenty-first century insights.

From the ‘Australian Book Review’ [ABR], August 2021:, the reviewer notes that   “Pride of Place describes in detail a selection of the outstanding collection of Australian books, paintings, photographs, and prints that Russell and Mabel Grimwade donated to the University of Melbourne. The main focus is on Russell, but they were clearly a team with shared interests in Australian native trees and plants and the European history of Australia”.

Most likely, Grimwade’s passion behind the development of his subsequent collection, was partially as a consequence of the fact that his talents and interests were so wide. As noted in the ABR review, ‘He served on numerous educational and cultural committees, travelled widely, and was a skilful amateur photographer. An early conservationist, he campaigned for the preservation of Australian forests. Using native  timbers, he  was a skilled wood worker and cabinet-maker..”  All of these things, and much more, including a strong interest in the botanical exploration of Australia from initial settlement years, are revealed through the descriptions of his collections.  The text, which accompanies all of the varied illustrations, describes the various items within the context of their time, and how these can be used by historians and scholars today.  And while it was not part of the University collection, Grimwade was responsible for the purchase of, and transfer to Australia of ‘Captain Cook’s Cottage’, now located in the Fitzroy Gardens, in Melbourne. The ABR does query the suspect link between Cook and Victoria – the cottage had belonged to his parents, and there is no evidence that Cook actually lived there?   There are various references to Cook’s voyages and findings, in the book, and the ABR suggests that Grimwade’s interest in the cottage  had to do with his collecting philosophy, his civic-minded philanthropy, and the general public consensus on what an historical monument was, something that is much contested today’.

As for the Editor, Alisa Bunbury has been Grimwade Collection Curator at the University of Melbourne since 2017. Prior to this she was Curator of Prints and Drawings at the National Gallery of Victoria and the Art Gallery of South Australia for many years. She has researched and curated exhibitions on numerous topics and now specialises in Australian colonial art. She also undertakes independent work and has received fellowships from State Library Victoria and the National Library of Australia.

Another valuable addition to my literary collection.

Famous Visitors : To A Famous City, edited by Doug Bradby, published in 2021, 32 pages.  This is another in the small historical series ‘Ten Delightful Tales’, with a new little edition coming out every two months. This little booklet talks  about a number of prominent persons who visited the city of Ballarat, in Victoria, from the times it was a gold  mining town of muck and mullock [early 1850s] to  the modern ‘Garden City’ of grandeur and beauty. An intriguing little publication, although I did note that a couple of the personalities mentioned didn’t ‘actually get to Ballarat’ but they were there ‘by association’ and the intention of a visit was there!!

I thought the following description published in the 25^th October edition of the ‘Golden Plains Times’, and written by Edwina Williams, does the best justice in describing this booklet.

‘Famous Visitors to a Famous City looks at the interesting people who historically took a trip to Ballarat in the 19th and 20th centuries, including Charles Kingsford Smith, ‘Wizard’ Stone, Agnes Grace, Sir John Monash, Robert Baden-Powell, Sir Douglas Mawson and Henry Parkes.

Bradby said the latest volume of his series is less analytical, and full of “gorgeous stories” that emphasise the joys of community life, and “mutual backslapping.”

“We said they were terrific, they said Ballarat was terrific, both sides were genuine, and everyone had a lovely day,” he said.

“Travel was risky, expensive and time consuming. If you were a visitor, there was something different about you; money and time.

“Visitors’ journeys were much the same, up Sturt Street, around the lake, to a few mines, and back to Craig’s Royal Hotel for dinner.”

Bradby said the most popular visitor was operatic soprano Dame Nellie Melba, who sang the city’s praises, and was “adored and loved” by the Ballarat people.

“She loved the South Street competitions, which were nationally important. They’d run into trouble financially… so she put on a concert, raising £800.

“She was brilliant with the press, saying ‘a day in Ballarat is the finest tonic in the world’,” Bradby said.

Captain John Bulwer Godfrey and his crew visited Ballarat during the gold rush, after a 77-day on-water journey from London via the ‘great circle route,’ past Antarctica.

The captain described the busy mining hub as an ‘ant heap.’

“He gave Ballarat the greatest possible compliment. He said, ‘this is more exciting than The Great Exhibition of London’,” Bradby said.

Prime Minister Joseph Cook stayed at Craig’s in August of 1917. It was in the hotel dining room on the evening of 2 August that he realised the magnitude of the upcoming First World War, and that Australia’s involvement was unavoidable.

Katie Gold, a stewardess on the Titanic, arrived in Ballarat three months after the liner sank, to be with her uncles.

She was the last woman to be rescued from the ship, finding safety in the final lifeboat, number 11.’

At the beginning of October this year, I completed a read of the ‘Selected Writings of Inga Clendinnen, edited by James Boyce [published 2021; 392 pages].  I’d not previously read anything of this historian and writer and after reading this publication, regretted that fact.

My attention was drawn to the book by a review [written by Tom Griffiths] which appeared in the June 2021 issue of the Australian Book Review.  Griffith is Emeritus Professor of History at the Australian National University and Chair of the Editorial Board of the Australian Dictionary of Biography.  Griffith’s introduction and the topics covered in the selection drew this reader right in.  He wrote: 

‘It is wonderful to immerse oneself for days in the precise, elegant, passionate words of historian Inga Clendinnen (1934–2016), as this welcome collection of her writings enables one to do. Clendinnen’s distinctive voice comes through: warm, confidential, witty, and driven by a fierce intelligence. All her major writings are here – essays, articles, lectures, memoirs, and extracts from her books – deftly selected by James Boyce, a historian thirty years younger than Clendinnen and himself a highly original thinker and writer. As Boyce observes in his perceptive introduction, ‘Clendinnen’s subject was nothing less than human consciousness’.

I obviously didn’t take that quotation in completely, as it wasn’t until after I’d finished the book, that I realised Inga was no longer with us, having died in 2016!

As for the subject nature of her writings in the selection [of which there are various topics included] those which attracted me initially related to the early encounters of Australia’s Indigenous people’s  with the authorities [and convicts mainly] who arrived on the First Fleet in 1788;  the early European conquests and encounters with the Mesoamerican Aztecs, early Mexican ‘natives’, and the crisis of those times in the Yucatin; and thirdly, her writings on Nazi Germany, especially in relation to the purpose of, and operations of the Nazi concentration and death camps.

Clendinnen has been described as one of Australia’s greatest writers and thinkers, an internationally celebrated historian and highly original thinker, who through her writings, and lectures, compelled readers or listeners to re-examine accepted histories from new angles, and that aim quickly becomes evident in the subjects mentioned above. Her writing has been described by numerous reviewers and book publishers in terms of an ‘attractive conversational style, with Clendinnen treating her readers as confidants, even collaborators, as she muses over historical dilemmas’.  And as she worked through those ‘dilemmas’, she addressed her readers or listeners as equals, as though they were working with her to solve and explain the mysteries of the past. In one of Clendinnen’s own statements, she’s quoted – “I … think my readers are as enthralled by the tough issues as I am,” she writes. “ ‘Popular history’ need not mean – must not mean – dumbed-down history.”

Having said that, I must admit that at times ‘she lost me’  – she was moving too fast, or perhaps introducing so many different and varied ideas in a short space, that I occasionally had difficulty keeping up with her’!  Though that is more likely a refection on myself, rather than Inga’s style of communication!

Clendinnen’s work focused on social history, and the history of cultural encounters. She was considered an authority on Aztec civilisation and pre-Columbian ritual human sacrifice.  She also wrote on the Holocaust, and on first contacts between Indigenous Australians and white explorers. Interestingly, she didn’t learn to read until she was 8 years old, and also came to writing late.  After years of successful academic studies,  Clendinnen would hold  the post of senior tutor of History at the University of Melbourne from 1955 to 1968, was a lecturer at La Trobe University from 1969 to 1982, and was then a senior lecturer in History until 1989.. She was forced to curtail her academic activities after contracting hepatitis in 1991, and began working on her memoir, Tiger’s Eye, which focused on issues of illness and death.

In his review, James Boyce wrote that Clendinnen’s ‘ability to write serious history for a general readership was unrivalled in this country … Her writings are an enduring testament to the truth that while we might “live within the narrow moving band of time we call the present … the secret engine of our present is our past, with its plastic memories, its malleable moralities, its wreathing dreams of desirable futures”.’ 

A comment from the Sydney Morning Herald, in May 2021 noted that  “ At first glance, Inga Clendinnen’s career as a historian is disorientatingly diverse. Having distinguished herself as a specialist in Meso-American studies, she shifted her focus to Australian history, her personal experience of illness, and then to the Holocaust. This selection of her writings [by James Boyce]  captures the underlying principles that were constants in all her work –  the importance of emotion, imagination and ethics in illuminating the past, and the belief that history can be conducive to “civic virtue”. The opening piece is a dazzling master class in her method. We are invited to witness an encounter between a pregnant Indigenous woman and a group of French explorers on a beach in 1801, and to enter into the colliding realities and worldviews that still reverberate in our understanding of ourselves as Australians.

On that latter instance, the explorers meant nor did any harm to the woman [or so they believed] who had been deserted by her countrymen when the explorers arrived –  they examined her, realising she was pregnant, and attempted to give her presents, afterwards, reporting back to France on the innocence of their encounter with the woman, who when they realised how frightened and crying she was, took leave of her, and watched as she crawled back into the bush, leaving behind the gifts they’d attempted to give to her. Clendinnen asks us to consider the following:

‘What is terrifying is that we do not know, even as we watch her press herself into the sand, as we watch her crawling away. We see her body, but we do not see her mind. What did she think was happening as she felt the hands of these very material apparitions? What did she think was happening to the child in her belly, the child she was desperately trying to protect from their sight and touch? And later, when she crept back to her people, how was she received? Was she received at all? Was she shunned? Was she killed? They would have been watching what happened. They would have seen her hanging in those strange bleached hands. What did they think had happened to the child in her belly?  Did they decide to kill it, too?  And the man who fled in terror, abandoning his pregnant woman to the strangers. Where would he find his manhood now?  We don’t know the answer to any of these questions.  All we do know is that no harm was intended, and that harm was almost certainly done…..We don’t know the woman’s story at all…” [p.16-17].

That’s a brief example of Clendinnen’s questioning of history – some other areas covered in this selection include:

• Why did a group of Indigenous people suddenly spear Governor Phillip, a man with whom some of them were on decidedly friendly terms?
• How was Cortés able to conquer Mexico so quickly with only a handful of soldiers?
• What motivated the Auschwitz SS to conduct elaborate parade drills with inmates they’d already reduced to living skeletons?
• She also examines from a personal perspective,  her own illness and liver transplant [in the early 1990s],  both before, during and post-surgery, and the trauma of organ transplants waiting lists  in general from the recipient’s experience.  Griffiths notes that at that time that ‘As she lay in a noisy shared hospital ward waiting for a liver transplant, her writing became a desperate means of escape and survival, a kind of private therapy. From that traumatic transformation, she unfolded herself from a chrysalis into a new state of being’.

Incidentally, when Clendinnen became the recipient of a liver transplant, she expressed great faith in the fact that in Australia “it’s strictly democratic … you can’t buy your way into the queue.”  She had to wait for that liver like any other potential recipient!

I include here another quotation from the selected writings. In a house in Elsternwick, Melbourne, there is [or was] a constructed model of the Treblinka Nazi camp. This camp, described by one observer as ‘Nazism in full flower’ had a short life – one of four Nazi camps exclusively dedicated to ‘murder’. It was the last to be built, the first to be closed, and afterwards was completely ‘obliterated’, the earth ploughed and a farm house built on the site.  ‘Treblinka received its first transport [from the Warsaw ghetto] on 23 July, 1942 and its last in October of 1943. In its brief life of fourteen months, the Treblinka camp processed 900,000 living bodies into smoke, grease and ashes’ [p. 246].

In her usual style of questioning, Clendinnen writes:

‘What the model shows most clearly is how easy mass murder is when emptied of human scruple and emotion. Except for the jocular attempts to deceive the more gullible among its victims [the arch above the station entrance read ‘Rehabilitation and Work-Camp for Jews’], Treblinka might as well have been an abattoir. 

Chaim Sztajer’s model reveals only externals.  It cannot show us the horror behind wood and metal; what happened inside the trains, what happened inside the buildings. Deportees were brought to the camp in sealed trains, Western Jews typically in ‘normal’ if overcrowded carriages, easterners crammed into cattle trucks with the doors nailed shut and every residual aperture stuffed with barbed wire. They were given no food or water for the duration of the passage, there were no sanitary provisions, and these trains, with nil priority on the track, travelled slowly.  The journey from Warsaw, normally a two-hour trip, could take up to twelve hours when the cargo was Jews and the destination Treblinka. We do not see what happened inside the trains.  We do not see the frantic haste of the team of work-Jews scouring those incoming cars of the filth of their human cargo to make way for the next set. [The camp siding could only take twenty cars at a time: most trains pulled sixty].

The model shows us a token litter of clothing and possessions in the sorting yard.  We do not see the mountains of clothing and boots, blankets and foodstuffs which rose up with the arrival of the richest trains.  We do not see the desperate intricacy of the lives lived inside the oblong wooden boxes labelled ‘Living Quarters for Work-Jews’, or the very different lives lived within the boxes named ‘For Ukrainian Guards’ and ‘SS”.  We do not see inside the undressing barracks – the bewilderment, the humiliation of nakedness, the mounting dread. We do not see the numb waiting inside the gas chambers, or the clambering, choking, panic.  We do not hear the screams..’ [p.248-49].

One could go on with that and/or the other subjects which Clendinnen peruses – the Sydney Morning Herald described her as  “both a moralist with an intense psychological feeling for the inflections of cruelty and the reality of human suffering and someone who saw something like the artistic impulse as central to every human and social enigma. To read her is to encounter an intelligence, at once impassioned and fierce, which is a bit like a great critic who has somehow, as if in a dream, found that no book or painting, but the world itself, is her text”.

In her lengthy treatises on the Mesoamerican explorations, she takes us not only into the motivations of the Spanish ‘invaders’, but examines the historical conflicts and cruelties and sacrificial practices between and within the Aztec and native Mexican peoples of those lands –   comparing the incomprehensible refusal of the Aztecs to accept defeat, while in contrast, the native Mexicans accepted dominance and suppression by the Europeans as a normal course of their life cycle –  admittedly, that’s a very basic and simple description of Clendinnen’s long discourses on those subjects!

 Griffiths reminds us that  Clendinnen inducted her readers into the wonders of historical thinking. He also suggests that “There are also clear correspondences between her studies of the Aztec Empire’s confronting culture of human sacrifice and her reflections on the horrors of the Holocaust. Clendinnen constantly fought against the sickening of curiosity and imagination  in the face of bureaucratic brutality and systematic murder. Empathy and intuition failed her as a means of accessing such past experiences”.

While much of what Clendinnen writes [as far as this selection indicates] could be described  as horror stories, which in many cases they are at different levels,  I believe it’s clear that a more precise reading, particularly of her books,  are worth following through on. Apart from various essays and articles, those books are:

• Ambivalent Conquests: Maya and Spaniard in Yucatán, 1517-1570 (1987)
• Aztecs: An Interpretation (1991)
• Reading the Holocaust (1998)
• True Stories (1999)
• Tiger’s Eye: A Memoir (2000)
• Dancing with Strangers: Europeans and Australians at First Contact (2003)
• True Stories: History, Politics, Aboriginality (2008) (2nd ed.)
• The Cost of Courage in Aztec Society: Essays on Mesoamerican Society and Culture (2010)

This Issue covers a number of books [24 in total] that the writer read over the period November 2020 to early July, 2021, and generally consists of brief comments on the book in question by myself, followed by a selection of professional and other reviews from various sources, all of which are acknowledged.  Books covered are listed below in order to enable readers to select those which may be of interest to them.

Books reviewed and referred to in the following order,  are:

• Chalet Monet by Richard Boyngne;
• Picturing the Pacific: Joseph Banks and the Shipboard Artists of Cook and Flinders’ by James Taylor;
• ‘The Queen’s Tiger’ by Peter Watt;
• ‘The Queen’s Captain’ by Peter Watt, 
• ‘Looking for Rose Paterson: How Family Bush Life Nurtured Banjo the Poet’  by Jennifer Gall, 
• ‘Merry Christmas: From Historic Ballarat, by Doug Bradley;
• The Golden Maze: A Biography of Prague’ by Richard Fidler;
• ‘The Stationery Shop of Tehran’ by Marjan Kamali:;
• ‘The Awakening: The Dragon Heart Legacy’  by Nora Roberts,
•  ‘How I Clawed My Way To The Middle’ by John Wood.,
• ‘A Passionate life’ by Ita Buttrose’;
• ‘Sea of Dangers: Captain Cook and His Rivals’ by Geoffrey Blainey
• Persuasion’  by Jane Austin’;
• ‘Story of Ireland: In search of a New National Memory’ by Neil Hegarty’,
•  ‘Lydiard Street: The Goldfield Grandeur of Ballarat [Doug Bradley],
• ‘Eucalyptus’ by Murray Bail
• ‘The Saddler Boys’ by Fiona Palmer,
• Writers on Writers: Thomas Keneally by Stan Grant;
• ‘Ten Delightful Tales: Lake Wendouree: ‘Pleasing to the Eye, Satisfying to the Soul’, introduced by Doug Bradby’;
• ‘The Reformation in England’ Vol 2  by J.H.Merle d’Aubigne,
• ‘The Tavern on Maple Street’ by Sharon Owens,
• ‘Breaker Morant’ by Peter FitzSimons
• ‘New Guinea: Nature and Culture of Earth’s Grandest Island by Bruce M. Beehier, photography by Tim Laman,
• ‘The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet’ by Colleen McCullough,

15^th November 2020

 ‘Chalet Monet’, an intriguing beautiful book about the home of the late Joan Sutherland, and Richard Boyngne   [delivered from Angus & Robertson on 11^th November, the cost of which partially contributed via birthday gift from Heather]. A magnificent addition to one’s library shelves, written by a man who loved his wife, and after her passing, has grown to love the beautiful home, which he proudly shares with the world.  A book, essentially a ‘coffee table’ book, beautifully put together – called ‘Chalet Monet’, featuring written and pictorial descriptions of the home in Switzerland of the late Dame Joan Sutherland and Richard Bonynge [who still lives there].  It is a treasure of a book –  and I’m already worrying about what will happen to it ‘after I’m gone’ 

After reading it, I don’t feel so bad about having prints. paintings and bookshelves around the walls here – in the Bonynge home of 3 or more stories, every wall space, nook and cranny is covered with paintings, photographs, statues, and myriad collections of figurines, etc,  He has collected objects of historic and artistic value from around the world, not just from exclusive sellers, but op shops, auctions, and so on. Joan Sutherland was not such a collector, but she obviously tolerated her husband’s ‘hobby’ when he wasn’t making and creating music and musicians. As you probably have gathered, I consider this book a prized possession!!

14th December, 2020

‘Picturing the Pacific:Joseph Banks and the Shipboard Artists of Cook and Flinders’ by James Taylor, published in  2018, 255 pages.

I found this a fascinating book from the view of the various paintings, etc, but it was not an easily read book – factual, but very detailed, with long references to many artists, shipping identities, and persons of the times  –  fascinating history, but too much detail and names, etc, to fully take in a complete knowledge of the contents. Nevertheless, a worthy addition to my art & history collection, and pleased that I’d made the purchase.

From Booktopia:

For over 50 years between the 1760s and the early 19th century, the pioneers who sailed from Europe to explore the Pacific brought back glimpses of this new world in the form of oil paintings, watercolours and drawings – a sensational view of a part of the world few would ever see. Today these works represent a fascinating and inspiring perspective from the frontier of discovery.
It was Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society, who popularised the placement of professional artists on British ships of exploration. They captured striking and memorable images of everything they encountered- exotic landscapes, beautiful flora and fauna, as well as remarkable portraits of indigenous peoples. These earliest views of the Pacific, particularly Australia, were designed to promote the new world as enticing, to make it seem familiar, to encourage further exploration and, ultimately, British settlement……………………………………………………………………………
Drawing on both private and public collections from around the world, this lavish book collects together oil paintings, watercolours, drawings, prints and other documents from those voyages, and presents a unique glimpse into an age where science and art became irrevocably intwined. 
About the Author:  Dr James Taylor, FRSA studied at the Universities of St Andrews, Manchester and Sussex. He is an accredited lecturer for the National Association of Fine and Decorative Arts; a former curator of paintings, drawings and prints, organiser of exhibitions and galleries and corporate membership manager at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich; and Victorian paintings specialist with Phillips Fine Art Auctioneers. He is an avid collector of artist-drawn picture postcards.

30th December, 2020

 ‘The Queen’s Tiger’ by Peter Watt, published in 2019; 360 pages

Another great read by this historical novelist –  this was Book 2 of 3 – it was a pity that it was so long ago since I read Book 1 as it took a while to pick up the threads of the current storyline and characters from the first book which I’d thoroughly enjoyed.

• ‘One of Australia’s best historical fiction authors’ Canberra Weekly; Peter Watt brings to the fore all the passion, adventure and white-knuckle battle scenes that made his beloved Duffy and Macintosh novels so popular. It is 1857. Colonial India is a simmering volcano of nationalism about to erupt.
• Peter Watt brings to the fore all the passion, adventure and white-knuckle battle scenes that made his beloved Duffy and Macintosh novels so popular.  It is 1857. Colonial India is a simmering volcano of nationalism about to erupt. Army surgeon Peter Campbell and his wife Alice, in India on their honeymoon, have no idea that they are about to be swept up in the chaos.  Ian Steele, known to all as Captain Samuel Forbes, is fighting for Queen and country in Persia. A world away, the real Samuel Forbes is planning to return to London – with potentially disastrous consequences for Samuel and Ian both.  Then Ian is posted to India, but not before a brief return to England and a reunion with the woman he loves. In India he renews his friendship with Peter Campbell, and discovers that Alice has taken on a most unlikely role. Together they face the enemy and the terrible deprivations and savagery of war – and then Ian receives news from London that crushes all his hopes…

2^nd January, 2021

 ‘The Queen’s Captain’ by Peter Watt,  published in 2020; 358 pages……Another thoroughly interesting and entertaining read, with a strong historical flavour as are all of Watt’s novels  [all of which I now possess and have read].  While his stories are not quite in the same category as those of Peter Fitzsimons or his fellow Australian author Tom Keneally  –  fictionized accounts of precise historical individuals or events –  I find their connection to historical events of the past, particularly involving Australia’s history, to be a strong incentive for me to want to learn more about that specific historical occasion, not always pleasant reading about the brutality of wars, or early British settlement, but nevertheless, always a worthwhile read.

From Booktopia:  In October 1863, Ian Steele, having taken on the identity of Captain Samuel Forbes, is fighting the Pashtun on the north-west frontier in India. Half a world away, the real Samuel Forbes is a lieutenant in the 3rd New York Volunteers and is facing the Confederates at the Battle of Mission Ridge in Tennessee. Neither is aware their lives will change beyond recognition in the year to come.
In London, Ella, the love of Ian’s life, is unhappily married to Count Nikolai Kasatkin. As their relationship sours further, she tries to reclaim the son she and Ian share, but Nikolai makes a move that sees the boy sent far from Ella’s reach………………………………………
As 1864 dawns, Ian is posted to the battlefields of the Waikato in New Zealand, where he comes face to face with an old nemesis. As the ten-year agreement between Steele and Forbes nears its end, their foe is desperate to catch them out and cruel all their hopes for the future..

10^th January, 2021

This morning  I finished reading one of Heather’s Christmas presents  –  ‘Looking for Rose Paterson: How Family Bush Life Nurtured Banjo the Poet’  by Jennifer Gall,  published by the National Library in 2017; 200 pages

An interesting book, and a particular interest to me –  the areas relating to life in the rural areas during the 1800s of women in particular. Some interesting quotations, which I would use in my James Kennedy Kirk family file  –  had myself wondering if Jane Agnes Suttie had similar experiences.

From Goodreads.

Rose was the mother of famous Australian poet Banjo Paterson (known as Barty as a boy) and, yet, very little has been written about her. As wife of pastoral station manager Andrew Bogle Paterson, Rose’s married life was lived under straitened financial circumstances, something that a woman of her class would not have expected. At Illalong station, near Yass, in New South Wales, Rose was isolated—geographically and socially. Andrew was frequently away, leaving Rose to manage on her own in their dilapidated slab house, often with no domestic help and often in harsh weather conditions. Her existence was punctuated by multiple pregnancies and childbirth, organising her seven children and their education and labouring over the never-ending chores. Looking for Rose Paterson places Rose within the broader context of Australian life in the 1870s and the 1880s, enabling us to develop an appreciation of her struggles and joys all the more.
Rose was a prolific letter writer and through the letters that have survived—a series to her sister Nora between 1873 and 1888—life in nineteenth-century rural Australia comes alive. We get to know Rose and come to understand the environment that shaped her son, Banjo, and influenced his development as a balladeer. 

From Booktopia.

Rose was the mother of famous Australian poet Banjo Paterson (known as Barty as a boy) and, yet, very little has been written about her. As wife of pastoral station manager Andrew Bogle Paterson, Rose’s married life was lived under straitened financial circumstances, something that a woman of her class would not have expected. At Illalong station, near Yass, in New South Wales, Rose was isolated-geographically and socially. Andrew was frequently away, leaving Rose to manage on her own in their dilapidated slab house, often with no domestic help and often in harsh weather conditions.
Her existence was punctuated by multiple pregnancies and childbirth, organising her seven children and their education and labouring over the never-ending chores. Looking for Rose Paterson places Rose within the broader context of Australian life in the 1870s and the 1880s, enabling us to develop an appreciation of her struggles and joys all the more.

Rose was a prolific letter writer and through the letters that have survived-a series to her sister Nora between 1873 and 1888-life in nineteenth-century rural Australia comes alive. We get to know Rose and come to understand the environment that shaped her son, Banjo, and influenced his development as a balladeer.

21^st January, 2021

Later this afternoon, I read ‘Merry Christmas: From Historic Ballarat, by Doug Bradley, just 28 pages –  another of the little gifts Heather gave me last Monday.

31^st January, 2021

This morning, before I went into town, I finished reding ‘The Golden Maze: A Biography of Prague’ by Richard Fidler, published in 2020, 580 pages.

This covers roughly the timeline period from c. 500BC  to 2011. An intriguing book, perhaps the earlier decades a little more difficult to follow as compared with the events of the 16^th and 20^th centuries, but in total, a story of domination, subjugation, apparent freedom, quickly reversed as new ‘rulers’ moved in. I guess I found the period  representing my own lifetime from post-World War II the most interesting, and also most disturbing  –  certainly from the 1960s, I would have read generally about the political events from that part of the world, but blindly, or sadly, didn’t really take in the true significance of what was happening. Like so many other parts of the world, here in the comfort and relative safety of Australia, on the other side of world,  we could really live in the shoes of this case, the people of Czechoslovakia [now two nations] and have any real understanding of what was happening in countries like that.

So this book was a real education and a wake-up call – and as I have said on previous reviews, created the desire to learn more about the histories, long past and more recent, of many countries and cities around the world. I wish I’d generated that kind of desire 50 years ago  –  I fear now, I’m running out of time to learn all that I would like to digest!!

From Booktopia: – book summary

Beloved ABC broadcaster and bestselling author of Ghost Empire and Saga Land, Richard Fidler is back with a personally curated history of the magical city that is Prague.
In 1989, Richard Fidler was living in London as part of the provocative Australian comedy trio The Doug Anthony All Stars when revolution broke out across Europe. Excited by this galvanising historic, human, moment, he travelled to Prague, where a decrepit police state was being overthrown by crowds of ecstatic citizens. His experience of the Velvet Revolution never let go of him.
Thirty years later Fidler returns to Prague to uncover the glorious and grotesque history of Europe’s most instagrammed and uncanny city: a jumble of gothic towers, baroque palaces and zig-zag lanes that has survived plagues, pogroms, Nazi terror and Soviet tanks. Founded in the ninth Century, Prague gave the world the golem, the robot, and the world’s biggest statue of Stalin, a behemoth that killed almost everyone who touched it.
Fidler tells the story of the reclusive emperor who brought the world’s most brilliant minds to Prague Castle to uncover the occult secrets of the universe. He explores the Black Palace, the wartime headquarters of the Nazi SS, and he meets victims of the communist secret police. Reaching back into Prague’s mythic past, he finds the city’s founder, the pagan priestess Libussa who prophesised: I see a city whose glory will touch the stars.
Following the story of Prague from its origins in medieval darkness to its uncertain present, Fidler does what he does so well – curates an absolutely engaging and compelling history of a place. You will learn things you never knew, with a tour guide who is erudite, inquisitive, and the best storyteller you could have as your companion.
About the Author,  Richard Fidler presents ‘Conversations with Richard Fidler’, an in-depth, up-close-and-personal interview program broadcast across Australia on ABC Radio. It is one of the most popular podcasts in Australia, with over five million downloaded programs every month. Richard is the author of the bestselling book Ghost Empire.

A couple of  individual reviews of the book.

• ][1]  Richard Fidler doesn’t write the history of particular eras – he writes histories of places. He has a way of giving life and humanity to these histories which can often be missing, with locations becoming characters with their own struggles and triumphs across time.
  The Golden Maze, his third such novel following Ghost Empire (Istanbul) and Sagaland (Iceland), focuses on making the Czech capital of Prague a living, breathing entity. He takes us from the city’s mythological birth, to the darkness of Medieval Europe, through to its countless occupations. He sets up the foundations of city, then populates it with the stories of a colourful array of historical figures, those who by turns are hapless, dedicated, cruel and revolutionary. Bohemian heroes from Jan Hus, Saint/Kings Wenceslas and Kafka are balanced with the stories of outsiders like Einstein and Ginsberg being charmed by its mystery.
  Fidler aims to show how the Czech people have suffered countless tyrannies due their unique geographical and cultural location among ‘greater’ powers – the struggles of the Reformation, the at times tyrannical Hapsburg rule in Holy Roman Empire, the sharp cruelty Nazi occupation, and the crushing totalitarian rule of the Soviets – they’ve seen it all, yet are never at the centre of historical discussion due to being a so-called ‘minor’ player in world events. This book shows that every little act can be revolutionary, no matter how much history may ignore it.
  If nothing else, I can say that with The Golden Maze, Fidler has completed his trifecta of deeply engaging and personal historical accounts.[Nick]
• [2] ‘I see a great city. Its glory will touch the stars.’
  Richard Fidler’s first experience of Prague was in 1989, during the Velvet Revolution. Thirty years later, he returned to uncover and write the history of this fascinating city.
  I have never visited Prague, and while I know aspects of its history, there were gaping holes in my knowledge. I read about Libussa, who prophesied a great city. I read about kings and emperors, triumphs, and tragedies. I explored gothic towers and baroque palaces, remembered the history of the Winter King and Winter Queen of Bohemia. I learned that Prague gave the world both the golem and the robot, as well as the world’s biggest statue of Stalin (now destroyed).
  The first half (roughly) of the book takes us from pre-history, through medieval times, to 1935. A mixed and rich history, with highlights of culture and science. There were also two denefestrations (in 1419 and 1618), plague as well as periods of both religious tolerance and unrest. I was interested in the history of the Jewish Renaissance in Prague during the sixteenth century.
  The second half of the book focusses on the turmoil of the twentieth century, from when Czechoslovakia ceased to exist, to the present. From the terror of the Nazis, the control by the Soviet, the Velvet Revolution and an uncertain future.
  There are almost forty pages of bibliography and endnotes for those readers who, having read this book, want more information.
  A fascinating biography of a city. [Jennifer Cameron-Smith]

The book was reviewed by Christopher Menz, in the October 2020 edition of the ‘Australian Book Review’  That review began with   –  “On May Day 1955, two years after his death, a colossal memorial to Joseph Stalin was unveiled on a prominent site north of central. Towering above the city and containing 14,000 tons of granite, it was the largest statue of the dictator ever created. Stalin was depicted at the head of a representative group of citizens, dubbed by some as a bread queue. Otakar Švec, a prominent Czech sculptor, had won the commission in 1949. After the work’s stressful gestation, he killed himself shortly before the work was unveiled; there had been constant interference and police surveillance, and his wife committed suicide in 1954.”

1^st February, 2021

The Stationery Shop of Tehran’ by Marjan Kamali: published in 2019,  312 pages.  A country in turmoil. A love story just beginning.  Another of my personal favourite genres – historical fiction –  and while basically a non-fiction novel, the story of life in Iran around 1953 and beyond was yet another historical education in events of my lifetime in a part of the world far removed from life here in Australia.

From Goodreads review

• A poignant, heartfelt new novel by the award-nominated author of Together Tea that explores loss, reconciliation, and the quirks of fate.
  Roya, a dreamy, idealistic teenager living amid the political upheaval of 1953 Tehran, finds a literary oasis in kindly Mr. Fakhri’s neighborhood stationery shop, stocked with books and pens and bottles of jewel-colored ink.
  Then Mr. Fakhri, with a keen instinct for a budding romance, introduces Roya to his other favorite customer—handsome Bahman, who has a burning passion for justice and a love for Rumi’s poetry—and she loses her heart at once. Their romance blossoms, and the little stationery shop remains their favorite place in all of Tehran.
  A few short months later, on the eve of their marriage, Roya agrees to meet Bahman at the town square when violence erupts—a result of the coup d’etat that forever changes their country’s future. In the chaos, Bahman never shows. For weeks, Roya tries desperately to contact him, but her efforts are fruitless. With a sorrowful heart, she moves on—to college in California, to another man, to a life in New England—until, more than sixty years later, an accident of fate leads her back to Bahman and offers her a chance to ask him the questions that have haunted her for more than half a century: Why did you leave? Where did you go? How is it that you were able to forget me?

From Simon & Schuster

• 1953, Tehran. Roya loves nothing better than to while away the hours in the local stationery shop run by Mr. Fakhri. The store, stocked with fountain pens, shiny ink bottles, and thick pads of writing paper, also carries translations of literature from all over the world. And when Mr. Fakhri introduces her to his other favorite customer — handsome Bahman, with his burning passion for justice and a shared love for Rumi’s poetry — Roya loses her heart at once. But around them, life in Tehran is changing.
  On the eve of their marriage, Roya heads to the town square to meet with Bahman. Suddenly, shockingly, violence erupts: a coup d’etat that forever changes their country’s future. Bahman never arrives.  Roya must piece her life back together. Her parents, wanting her to be safe, enroll her in college in California, where she meets and marries another man. But, nearly sixty years later, an accident of fate finally brings her the answer she has always wanted to know – Why did you leave? Where did you go? How is it that you were able to forget me?
  Marjan Kamali’s beautiful novel, set in a country poised for democracy but destroyed by political upheaval, explores issues that have never been more timely, of immigration and cultural assimilation, of the quirks of fate. And its ending will break readers’ hearts.
  ‘Kamali paints an evocative portrait of 1950s Iran and its political upheaval, and she cleverly writes the heartbreak of Roya and Bahman’s romance to mirror the tragic recent history of their country. Simultaneously briskly paced and deeply moving, this will appeal to fans of Khaled Hosseini and should find a wide audience’
• ‘Evocative, devastating, and hauntingly beautiful … explores love’s power to transcend time and distance, and the ways fate can tear people apart and bring them back together. This book broke my heart again and again’
  Whitney Scharer, author of THE AGE OF LIGHT
• ‘What a pleasure — a novel that is all at once masterfully plotted, beautifully written, and populated by characters who are arresting, lovable and so real’
  Elinor Lipman, author of TURPENTINE LANE;
•  ‘A beautiful and sensitive novel that I loved from the first page’
  Alyson Richman, international bestselling author of THE LOST WIFE
• ‘A beautifully immersive tale … brings to life a lost and complex world and the captivating characters who once called it home’Jasmin Darznik, New York Times bestselling author of THE GOOD DAUGHTER and SONG OF A CAPTIVE BIRD
• ‘A sweeping romantic tale of thwarted love’
  KIRKUS REVIEWS
• ‘The unfurling stories  … will stun readers as the aromas of Persian cooking wafting throughout convince us that love can last a lifetime. For those who enjoy getting caught up in romance while discovering unfamiliar history of another country’
  LIBRARY JOURNAL
• ‘Grab your tissues… Set among the political upheaval of 1950s Tehran, The Stationery Shop follows teenager Roya as she discovers the power of love, loss, and then, decades later, fate.
  BOSTON MAGAZINE
• ‘A tender story of enduring love.’
  MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE
• ‘I! Am! Obsessed! With! This! Book!’
  COSMOPOLITAN.COM
• Meanwhile, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald in 2019, Kerryn Goldsworthy writes

In mid-20th century Tehran, two teenagers meet in a stationery shop and fall in love. Roya and Bahman are both under the covert protection of the shop owner, and with his help they get to the point where they are engaged to be married. But the shop owner has secrets of his own, and between the opposition of Bahman’s unstable mother and the increasing political unrest in the country, the relationship is struggling. This well-plotted story shows how many different forces can combine to thwart individual desires and plans. Most contemporary Westerners’ knowledge of Iran probably doesn’t go back much further than the Islamic Revolution of 1979. But almost all of this novel is set in Tehran in 1953, and the insight it provides into modern Iranian history will give readers a new perspective into the backstory of a country that is once again in the news.

The Author:  Marjan Kamali, born in Turkey to Iranian parents, spent her childhood in Kenya, Germany, Turkey, Iran, and the United States. She holds degrees from UC Berkeley, Columbia University, and New York University. Her work has also been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and published in two anthologies: Tremors and Let Me Tell You Where I’ve Been. An excerpt from The Stationery Shop was published in Solstice Literary Magazine and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her debut novel Together Tea was a Massachusetts Book Award Finalist, an NPR WBUR Good Read, and a Target Emerging Author Selection. Marjan lives with her husband and two children in the Boston area.

12^th February, 2021

‘The Awakening: The Dragon Heart Legacy’  by Nora Roberts, published in 2020, 435 pages.  I bought this book at QBD on the 3^rd December, not sure what to expect but the promotion attracted me I think, not having read any of her books previously. As I got to the end of  the story, I realised that this was the first of a Trilogy –  which at the finish, I’d wondered, as it didn’t really end, with a clear ending. Whether I will follow through and read subsequent sequences, I’m not sure –  I enjoyed the storyline, but, not so much, the degree of magic and fantasy that dominated much of it. The author is described as ‘worldwide bestseller, a tale of adventure, magic and finding your home’  –  the ‘magic’ part I was not so keen on.

Booktopia comment: 

• The bestselling author of the epic Chronicles of The One trilogy, returns with the first in a brand new trilogy where parallel worlds clash over the struggle between good and evil.
  Mists, shimmering silver fingers, rose over the pale green water of the lake. They twined and twisted toward a sky quietly gray, while in the east, over the hills, a pink blush waited, like a held breath, to waken.
  Breen Kelly had always been a rule follower. So, when her father left when she was twelve years old, promising to return, she waited. Now, more than a decade later, she’s working at a job she hates and is tired of the life that playing by the rules has dealt her. It’s time to make a change.
  Breen makes a leap into the unknown with a summer trip to Ireland – her father’s homeland. Little does she know how much of a leap until a walk in the woods leads her through a portal into another world – Talamh – where Breen will find magic, family and a destiny she could never have dreamed of…
  From Sunday Times bestseller Nora Roberts – a tale of adventure, magic and finding your home.

From Goodreads comment

Author Nora Roberts begins a new trilogy of adventure, romance, and magick in The Awakening.
In the realm of Talamh, a teenage warrior named Keegan emerges from a lake holding a sword—representing both power and the terrifying responsibility to protect the Fey. In another realm known as Philadelphia, a young woman has just discovered she possesses a treasure of her own…
When Breen Kelly was a girl, her father would tell her stories of magical places. Now she’s an anxious twentysomething mired in student debt and working a job she hates. But one day she stumbles upon a shocking discovery: her mother has been hiding an investment account in her name. It has been funded by her long-lost father—and it’s worth nearly four million dollars.
This newfound fortune would be life-changing for anyone. But little does Breen know that when she uses some of the money to journey to Ireland, it will unlock mysteries she couldn’t have imagined. Here, she will begin to understand why she kept seeing that silver-haired, elusive man, why she imagined his voice in her head saying Come home, Breen Siobhan. It’s time you came home. Why she dreamed of dragons. And where her true destiny lies—through a portal in Galway that takes her to a land of faeries and mermaids, to a man named Keegan, and to the courage in her own heart that will guide her through a powerful, dangerous destiny…

16^th February, 2021

‘How I Clawed My Way To The Middle’ by John Wood., published in 2020, 308 pages  –  An interesting read  [autobiography, rather reluctantly written, I gather] – this was the third of the three books that Heather gave me for Christmas last year, all now read. Easier to read than most biographies – perhaps because  he was an actor, not really a writer, and referenced often to the fact that he couldn’t remember specific details and/or names!!

From Goodreads

• The long awaited autobiography of one of Australia’s best loved actors.
  ‘Your job is to go out there, grab the audience by the balls, and drag them up on stage with you!’ I was flabbergasted. This I understood. A language that I spoke – had spoken most of my life. It was the best acting note I ever got.
• John Wood grew up in working-class Melbourne; when he failed out of high school, an employment officer told him, ‘You have the mind of an artist and the body of a labourer.’ And so John continued to pursue his acting dreams in amateur theatre, sustaining himself by working jobs as a bricklayer, a railway clerk and even in the same abattoir as his father.
  When he won a scholarship to NIDA, in Sydney, it moved John into a new and at times baffling world, full of extraordinary characters. It was the start of a decades-long acting career, most famously on shows such as Rafferty’s Rules and Blue Heelers, where his charm made him beloved in households across the country. His popularity was such that he was nominated for a Gold Logie nine times in a row, finally culminating in a win in 2006.
  How I Clawed My Way to the Middle is a beguiling memoir from one of Australia’s most cherished actors on both stage and screen. Full of humility, warmth and humour, it tells of the ephemeral nature of theatre, the luminous personalities John encountered along the way, and the perilous reality of life as a professional actor in Australia

21^st February,  2021

 ‘A Passionate life’ by Ita Buttrose, published in 1998, 468 pages.  A very interesting and informative book – much of it about her life up until the 1990’s, and considerable chapters devoted to her opinions, and those of others on such topics as Mateship vs Friendship; Aids; Have men lost their way?; Will the ‘Family’ survive?;   Women in the 90’s; Australia: where to now?,  and so on.  Obviously, much of the book was devoted to the changing roles of women in society and the work place , but that was to be expected, nevertheless a very balanced look at many aspects, including those topics mentioned.

From Booktopia:

Known and loved by Australians as the editor of The Australian Women’s Weekly throughout the second half of the seventies, Ita Buttrose has also made lasting contributions to many other aspects of our lives and culture.
In A Passionate Life, she traces her working career – from fifteen-year-old cadet journalist, through editorships of Cleo, the Weekly and ITA magazines, to heading up the National Advisory Council on AIDS (NACAIDS), working with World Vision, Alzheimer’s Australia, the Macular Degeneration Foundation and Arthritis Australia, and accepting broad-ranging speaking engagements. Along the way, Ita gives us glimpses of the inner workings of the Australian media, politics, the arts – and the lives and personalities of many of the well-known people she has met and worked with, including Australian media giants Kerry Packer and Rupert Murdoch. With great courage and honesty, she also allows us into the more personal aspects of her life as a working mother during these years.
Ita shares the insights and philosophical views she has developed through her rich and diverse experience of life in Australia during the second half of the twentieth century. From her position as respected stateswoman, Ita Buttrose explores such varied subjects as the value of friendship, the changing nature of families, the ageing of our population, and Australia’s future directions in these early years of the twenty-first century. Laced with optimism, humour and wisdom, Ita’s perspective is uniquely Australian – and always passionate.

And from an early ‘Penguin’ edition.

Kerry Packer described her as a ‘dedicated and brilliant journalist who has achieved greatness in her industry very early and so quickly’ and ‘a jewel beyond price’. Cold Chisel wrote a song about her. Rupert Murdoch was so impressed by her talents, he asked her to be the editor-in-chief of both the Daily and Sunday Telegraphs – and in doing so, become the first woman ever to edit a major Australian metropolitan newspaper.

In her extraordinary career, spanning over fifty years, Ita Buttrose has been involved in every aspect of the media, from newspapers and magazines to television and radio and now, electronic publishing. From her creation of a new type of women’s magazine in Cleo and then ITA, to her appointment as the youngest-ever editor of The Australian Women’s Weekly (a distinction she still holds today), a passionate love of journalism has driven her every step of the way.

Refreshingly candid about the challenges she has faced as a professional woman, not only in her career but also in her love life and as a mother, A Passionate Life describes those ground-breaking years with Ita’s trademark clarity, precision and wit.

In this substantially revised and expanded edition, Ita also shares her views on current affairs and the state of the media today, including an insider’s perspective on the Murdoch empire. We hear about her significant recent contribution to various health awareness campaigns, particularly Alzheimer’s Australia; her coverage of the 2011 royal wedding; her new incarnation as a rap star; the making of Paper Giants and her recent venture into the new territory of electronic publishing.

An appealing and lively autobiography by one of Australia’s most distinguished journalists, A Passionate Life will strike a chord with working women everywhere.

14^th March 2021

 ‘Sea of Dangers: Captain Cook and His Rivals’ by Geoffrey Blainey, published in 2008, 420pages

As usual with Blainey’s historical writings, very interesting and fascinating depiction of the subject matter.

Hill of Content Bookshop,

• Two ships set out in search of a missing continent- the St Jean-Baptiste,a French merchant ship commanded by Jean de Surville, and the Endeavour, a small British naval vessel captained by James Cook. Distinguished historian Geoffrey Blainey tells the story of these rival ships and the men who sailed them. Just before  Christmas 1769, the two captains were almost close enough to  see one another – and yet they did not know of each other’s existence. Both crews battled extreme hardships but also experienced the euphoria of ‘discovering’ new lands. Sea of Dangers is the most revealing narrative so far written of Cook’s astonishing voyage. It also casts new light on the little-known journey by de Surville; Blainey argues that he was in the vicinity of Sydney Harbour months before Cook arrived. ‘A master storyteller’s account of the way fantasy and rumour have driven science and exploration’ – Weekend Australian ‘Blainey’s characteristic curiosity raises new questions about Cook and his reputation’ – The Age

From Goodreads.

• In 1769 two ships set out independently in search of a missing continent: a French merchant ship, the St. Jean-Baptiste, commanded by Jean de Surville, and a small British naval vessel, the Endeavour, commanded by Captain James Cook. That Christmas, in New Zealand waters, the two captains were almost within sight of each other, though neither knew of the other’s existence. This is the stirring tale of these rival ships and the men who sailed in them. Cook’s first long voyage was one of the most remarkable in recorded history. He not only sailed around the world, following the most difficult route any navigator had ever attempted; he also changed the maps of the world. In heavy seas he made a more thorough search for the missing continent-believed to lie somewhere between New Zealand and South America-than had ever been made. He was the first to explore most of the New Zealand coast and a vast stretch of the east coast of Australia, and the first to explore the longest reef in the world, the Great Barrier Reef. In Jakarta and Cape Town, and in the seas between them, Cook lost a third of his crew to tropical illnesses, after earlier saving them from scurvy. The ship in which he circled the world was not much larger in area than a tennis court. Along with the de Surville vessel, the sea was an arena of international rivalry, for during his voyage Cook encountered Dutch, Spanish, French, and Portuguese competitors and suspicions. Geoffrey Blainey brings his marvelous storytelling powers to bear on this fascinating and important adventure, drawing us brilliantly into the lives of the major figures.
  
  

19^th March 2021

 ‘Persuasion’  by Jane Austin, published in 1817, this ‘Folio Society’ edition of 235 pages. I quite enjoyed reading this, despite a slow start, and taking time to get into the story  –  this was part of a collection of the Jane Austin novels, I purchased as a package some years ago. Have still not read them all –  just decided to turn to her among my other readings and pleased I did.  Certainly a different style of writing, reflecting a different style of society to what we experience today!!

Some comments from three sources.

Wikipedia

Persuasion is the last novel fully completed by Jane Austen. It was published at the end of 1817, six months after her death.

The story concerns Anne Elliot, a young Englishwoman of twenty-seven years, whose family moves to lower their expenses and reduce their debt by renting their home to an Admiral and his wife. The wife’s brother, Navy Captain Frederick Wentworth, was engaged to Anne in 1806, but the engagement was broken when Anne was “persuaded” by her friends and family to end their relationship. Anne and Captain Wentworth, both single and unattached, meet again after a seven-year separation, setting the scene for many humorous encounters as well as a second, well-considered chance at love and marriage for Anne in her second “bloom”.

The novel was well-received in the early 19th century, but its greater fame came later in the century and continued into the 20th and 21st centuries. Much scholarly debate on Austen’s work has since been published. Anne Elliot is noteworthy among Austen’s heroines for her relative maturity. As Persuasion was Austen’s last completed work, it is accepted as her most maturely written novel, showing a refinement of literary conception indicative of a woman approaching forty years of age. Her use of free indirect discourse in narrative was in full evidence by 1816.

Persuasion has been the subject of several adaptations, including four made-for-television adaptations, theatre productions, radio broadcasts, and other literary works.

From Booktopia

Persuasion narrates the emotional journey of its protagonist Anne Elliot, who chances upon Captain Wentworth, a suitor she was persuaded to reject seven years earlier, and whose reappearance causes her to reflect on her past decisions and contemplate her marital future.
Vividly depicting the society holiday towns of Lyme Regis and Bath and infused with its author’s trademark wit, Austen’s last completed novel, set against the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars, is an entertaining and enduring account of the dilemmas facing young women in the early nineteenth century

From Goodreads

Twenty-seven-year old Anne Elliot is Austen’s most adult heroine. Eight years before the story proper begins, she is happily betrothed to a naval officer, Frederick Wentworth, but she precipitously breaks off the engagement when persuaded by her friend Lady Russell that such a match is unworthy. The breakup produces in Anne a deep and long-lasting regret. When later Wentworth returns from sea a rich and successful captain, he finds Anne’s family on the brink of financial ruin and his own sister a tenant in Kellynch Hall, the Elliot estate. All the tension of the novel revolves around one question: Will Anne and Wentworth be reunited in their love?
Jane Austen once compared her writing to painting on a little bit of ivory, 2 inches square. Readers of Persuasion will discover that neither her skill for delicate, ironic observations on social custom, love, and marriage nor her ability to apply a sharp focus lens to English manners and morals has deserted her in her final finished work.

Wikipedia

The story begins seven years after the broken engagement of Anne Elliot to Frederick Wentworth. Having just turned nineteen years old, Anne fell in love and accepted a proposal of marriage from Wentworth, then a young and undistinguished naval officer. Wentworth was considered clever, confident and ambitious, but his low social status made Anne’s friends and family view the Commander as an unfavorable partner. Anne’s father, Sir Walter Elliot, and her older sister, Elizabeth, maintained that Wentworth was no match for a woman of Kellynch Hall, the family estate. Lady Russell, a distant relative who Anne considers to be a second mother after her own passed away, saw the relationship as imprudent for one so young and persuaded Anne to break off the engagement. Sir Walter, Elizabeth, and Lady Russell are the only family members who knew about the short engagement, as Anne’s younger sister Mary was away at school.

Several years later, the Elliot family is in financial trouble on account of their lavish spending, so they rent out Kellynch Hall and decide to settle in a cheaper home in Bath until their finances improve. Sir Walter, Elizabeth, and Elizabeth’s new companion, Mrs Clay, look forward to the move. Anne is less sure she will enjoy Bath, but cannot go against her family. Mary is now married to Charles Musgrove of Uppercross Hall, the heir to a respected local squire. Anne visits Mary and her family, where she is well-loved. As the war against France is over, the tenants of Kellynch Hall, Admiral Croft and his wife Sophia, (Frederick’s sister), have returned home. Captain Wentworth, now wealthy and famous for his service in the war, visits his sister and meets the Uppercross family, where he crosses paths with Anne.

The Musgroves, including Mary, Charles, and Charles’ sisters Henrietta and Louisa, welcome the Crofts and Captain Wentworth, who makes it known that he is ready to marry. Henrietta is engaged to her cousin, clergyman Charles Hayter, who is absent when Wentworth is introduced to their social circle. Both the Crofts and Musgroves enjoy speculating about which sister Captain Wentworth might marry. Once Hayter returns, Henrietta turns her affections to him again. Anne still loves Wentworth, so each meeting with him requires preparation for her own strong emotions. She overhears a conversation in which Louisa tells Wentworth that Charles Musgrove first proposed to Anne, who turned him down. This news startles Wentworth, and Anne realises that he has not yet forgiven her for letting herself be persuaded to end their engagement years ago.

Anne and the young adults of the Uppercross family accompany Captain Wentworth on a visit to see two of his fellow officers, Captains Harville and Benwick, in the coastal town of Lyme Regis. Captain Benwick is in mourning over the death of his fiancée, Captain Harville’s sister, and he appreciates Anne’s sympathy and understanding. They bond over their mutual admiration for the Romantic poets. Anne attracts the attention of Mr William Elliot, her cousin and a wealthy widower who is heir to Kellynch Hall despite having broken ties with her father years earlier. On the last morning of the visit, Louisa sustains a serious concussion. Anne coolly organizes the others to summon assistance. Wentworth is impressed with Anne’s quick thinking and cool-headedness, but feels guilty about his actions with Louisa, causing him to re-examine his feelings for Anne.

Following Louisa’s accident, Anne joins her father and sister in Bath with Lady Russell while Louisa and her parents stay at the Harvilles’ in Lyme Regis for her recovery. Captain Wentworth visits his older brother Edward in Shropshire. Anne finds that her father and sister are flattered by the attentions of William, believing that if he marries Elizabeth, the family fortunes will be restored. Although Anne likes William and enjoys his manners, she finds his character opaque and difficult to judge.

Admiral Croft and his wife arrive in Bath with the news that Louisa is engaged to Captain Benwick. Wentworth travels to Bath, where his jealousy is piqued by seeing William trying to court Anne. Captain Wentworth and Anne renew their acquaintance. Anne visits Mrs Smith, an old school friend, who is now a widow living in Bath under strained circumstances. From her, Anne discovers that beneath William’s charming veneer, he is a cold, calculating opportunist who led Mrs Smith’s late husband into debt. As executor to her husband’s will, William has done nothing to improve Mrs Smith’s situation. Although Mrs Smith believes that William is genuinely attracted to Anne, she feels that his primary aim is to prevent Mrs Clay from marrying his uncle, as a new marriage might mean a new son, displacing him as heir to Kellynch Hall.

The Musgroves visit Bath to purchase wedding clothes for Louisa and Henrietta, both soon to marry. Captains Wentworth and Harville encounter them and Anne at the Musgroves’ hotel in Bath, where Wentworth overhears Anne and Harville discussing the relative faithfulness of men and women in love. Deeply moved by what Anne says about women not giving up their feelings of love even when all hope is lost, Wentworth writes her a note declaring his feelings for her. Outside the hotel, Anne and Wentworth reconcile, affirm their love for each other, and renew their engagement. William leaves Bath; Mrs Clay soon follows him and becomes his mistress, ensuring that he will inherit Kellynch Hall. Lady Russell admits she was wrong about Wentworth and befriends the new couple. Once Anne and Wentworth have married, Wentworth helps Mrs Smith recover the remaining assets that William had kept from her. Anne settles into her new life as the wife of a Navy captain.

11^th April, 2021

 ‘Story of Ireland: In search of a New National Memory’ by Neil Hegarty’, published in 2011, 374 pages

A very detailed book as I guess most histories should be.  If you talk to an Irishman, most of Ireland’s troubles over the centuries were caused by the English – yes, that obviously had a large bearing on the lives of the population. But what I found thoroughly confusing in some ways, and in my view, another major cause of that country’s troubles – the Irish themselves, their lack of tolerance for difference, be it religion or other things, the constant massacres and ‘civil war’ type conflicts within their own peoples, and sadly, the terrible hatred generated between Catholic and Protestant [although of course, similar periods occurred in England in that respect as well, eg, in the Reformation period, and at other times in Britain’s history].  It was also noteworthy to read of the many raids by the Irish on the coastal fringes of south west England in the early centuries, where English prisoners were taken back to Ireland where they virtually became slaves to Irish property owners etc. History shows it was not all a one-way persecution.

In some ways, a difficult book to retain the volume of detail and names, etc referred to in Hegarty’s volume, and for myself, it was not always easy to determine just who was fighting who, not really sure if during some of those early centuries, the Irish always knew just who were their enemies or their friends!!

A couple of comments from more expert reviewers.

From ‘Goodreads’

• In this groundbreaking history of Ireland, Neil Hegarty presents a fresh perspective on Ireland’s past. Comprehensive and engaging, The Story of Ireland is an eye-opening account of a nation that has long been shaped by forces beyond its coasts.
  The Story of Ireland re-examines Irish history, challenging the accepted stories and long-held myths associated with Ireland. Transporting readers to the Ireland of the past, beginning with the first settlement in A.D. 433, this is a sweeping and compelling history of one of the world’s most dynamic nations. Hegarty examines how world events, including Europe’s 16th century religious wars, the French and American revolutions, and Ireland’s policy of neutrality during World War II, have shaped the country over the course of its long and fascinating history. With an up-to-date afterword that details the present state of affairs in Ireland, this is an essential text for readers who are fascinated by current events, politics, and history.
  Spanning Irish history from its earliest inhabitants to the country’s current financial crisis, The Story of Ireland is an epic and brilliant re-telling of Ireland’s history from a new point of view. 

And from Jonathan Yardly in the ‘Washington Post’ [March 2012.

• The collapse of the Celtic Tiger four years ago, in a spectacular collision of private and public corruption amid a wildly inflated real estate bubble, was a dreadful blow to the people of Ireland, who with some justification thought that after centuries of poverty and disappointment, their country had at last come into its own. As Neil Hegarty writes in “The Story of Ireland,” however, the implosion was easily explained by Irish history:

“There are specific cultural reasons why such a situation evolved. The history of Ireland had propagated a sense of failure and of inferiority, encapsulated in the forced emigration of generation after generation of young people in search of opportunities that their homeland simply could not provide. The economic boom seemed to put this traumatic history firmly in the past: it belonged in another era — virtually in another country. The ongoing moves towards resolving what had seemed an intractable conflict in Northern Ireland, moreover, served to copper-fasten this sensation that Ireland had indeed left its scarred past behind. The result was exuberance and confidence on a widespread scale.”

Unfortunately, though, “the political and administrative structures of the country remained rooted firmly in this ostensibly banished past.” The “power of patronage and of local connections ruled supreme; and a small political and economic elite, with guaranteed access to bank officials and ministers, ran the country in its own interests.”

The collapse of the Celtic Tiger four years ago, in a spectacular collision of private and public corruption amid a wildly inflated real estate bubble, was a dreadful blow to the people of Ireland, who with some justification thought that after centuries of poverty and disappointment, their country had at last come into its own. As Neil Hegarty writes in “The Story of Ireland,” however, the implosion was easily explained by Irish history:

“There are specific cultural reasons why such a situation evolved. The history of Ireland had propagated a sense of failure and of inferiority, encapsulated in the forced emigration of generation after generation of young people in search of opportunities that their homeland simply could not provide. The economic boom seemed to put this traumatic history firmly in the past: it belonged in another era — virtually in another country. The ongoing moves towards resolving what had seemed an intractable conflict in Northern Ireland, moreover, served to copper-fasten this sensation that Ireland had indeed left its scarred past behind. The result was exuberance and confidence on a widespread scale.”

Unfortunately, though, “the political and administrative structures of the country remained rooted firmly in this ostensibly banished past.” The “power of patronage and of local connections ruled supreme; and a small political and economic elite, with guaranteed access to bank officials and ministers, ran the country in its own interests.”

Hegarty’s analysis of this calamity, though astute, occupies only a few paragraphs at the end of this book; readers who want a more detailed (and far more pungent) analysis should turn to Fintan O’Toole’s “Ship of Fools: How Stupidity and Corruption Sank the Celtic Tiger” (2010). But Hegarty does place the present state of affairs in historical context, which in Ireland’s case is a history of religious hatred and discrimination, endemic violence, suppression and exploitation at the hands of England, all this taking place in a small island nation of incomparable natural beauty and with a cultural heritage far richer than that of almost any larger nation.

“The Story of Ireland” is the companion book to a television series of the same name that was broadcast by the BBC’s Northern Ireland arm a year ago; no plans have been announced for airing in the United States, but let us hope that will change. For all the tragedy and fierce contention with which it is charged, the history of Ireland is dramatic and, as a human story, utterly engaging. The themes that Hegarty detects in it include “persistence and consistency”; the “disenfranchised or otherwise put-upon exile seeking foreign aid — with potentially momentous consequences”; a relationship between Ireland and England that is “close and mutually significant”; a “fusion between religious and civil authorities”; and a “connection between faith and nation indivisible in the minds of its people.”

All of this is familiar to anyone with a passing knowledge of the Irish past, but Hegarty takes a significant step beyond the conventional wisdom when he argues that Ireland is not a cramped, inward, provincial place isolated from the rest of the world by the sea and by its hermetic character, but rather a place with a powerful “international dimension.” There is, he argues, “a long-established tradition in Irish culture: one of porousness, of openness to overseas influence — a tradition that sprang from long years of inward migration, travel, and human and economic relationships.”

The Norse invaders in the 10th and 11th centuries were violent and cruel, but they left their positive marks as well: “In Dublin, as in the other Norse seaports, cultural mingling became increasingly the order of the day: in the decorative work that survives from the period, for example, Norse symmetry and interlacing begins to replace the Anglo-Saxon detail that had previously influenced Irish design.” Though the lower social orders remained rooted in the places of their birth, “a great many merchants, soldiers and politicians were well acquainted with the wider world.” As Hegarty says in conclusion:

“Ireland has always been open to the world, its population from the very beginning bolstered, its towns shaped and its gene pool widened by newcomers. . . . Ireland has donned the garb of many cultures over the years: its Gaelic kingdoms cheek by jowl with Norse city states and later with an English colony slowly taking root in the land; its post-Cromwellian Ascendancy estates living with a growing Catholic middle class. And for almost a century, two states in Ireland have been divided by a border that was once heavily policed but has now essentially vanished. Ireland has always been ‘incorrigibly plural’ — and, as part of a wider European culture, it remains so today.”

The great and not-so-great names of Irish political, military and religious history march through these pages: Saint Patrick, “a complex and compelling character” whose interesting peculiarities have been lost in a fog of myth; Brian Boru, bold soldier of the 11th century and “Emperor of the Irish”; Robert Emmet, executed in his mid-20s, famous through the centuries for “idealism, enthusiasm, oratory and youthful energy,” albeit fame based in “slender achievements”; Daniel O’Connell, whose Catholic Association was “one of the first popular democratic organizations in the modern world”; Charles Stewart Parnell, a heroic figure ultimately disgraced; Michael Collins, Eamon de Valera and others of more recent vintage who in their differing ways shaped the Irish republic and brought the Troubles to an end late in the 20th century.

Along the way there are secret societies too numerous to mention, battles of a mostly ferocious character and almost unceasing acts of violence, many of them perpetrated against the innocent. That Ireland has been bitterly divided between Catholics and Protestants for as long as those denominations have existed requires no elaboration here; no theme in Irish history is stronger than this one, and none has had more painful consequences. The terrible potato famine of the 1840s of course gets its due, but I find it odd that there is no mention, in the text or even the “further reading list,” of Cecil Woodham-Smith’s “The Great Hunger” (1962), in the view of many the definitive book on that terrible subject and a vastly more compelling account of that great human tragedy than Hegarty’s brief overview.

This is doubly odd because Hegarty, a writer of both fiction and nonfiction, clearly knows his Irish history well and has done admirable research. As a one-volume guide to political, military and economic matters, “The Story of Ireland” can be read to useful effect. It is considerably less useful, though, on Irish social and cultural life. We are told, for example, that in the early 19th century, “social distress, vagrancy and destitution became part and parcel of the lives of the poor; agrarian crime, want and hunger grew following a disastrous collapse in agricultural prices,” but we really don’t get much sense of what quotidian life was like for those at the bottom of the ladder, i.e., for most of the Irish.

By the same token we are told that beginning with medieval monastic writings, “a literary tradition evolved in Ireland centuries before it appeared elsewhere in Europe,” but the subsequent development of that tradition is only scantily attended to. You would hardly know from Hegarty’s narrative that Ireland — the land of Jonathan Swift, William Butler Yeats, John Millington Synge, Maud Gonne, James Joyce, Elizabeth Bowen, Sean O’Faolain, Edna O’Brien and too many others to mention here — has in fact a literary tradition so deep and rich as to be the envy of the rest of the world. He quotes Yeats — “We are no petty people. We are one of the great stocks of Europe. We are the people of Burke, we are the people of Swift, the people of Emmet, the people of Parnell” — but is content to leave it pretty much at that.

Nor are we told anything about Irish music, which from medieval balladeers to U2 has expressed the temper of the land and has become widely known, and loved, throughout the world. Ditto for other aspects of Irish culture and life, from food to architecture. How can the book be called “A History of the Irish People” with all that left out?

Which is to say that so far as it goes, “The Story of Ireland” is fine, but it doesn’t go nearly far enough.

Mid April, 2021

‘Lydiard Street: The Goldfield Grandeur of Ballarat [Doug Bradley],  a ‘Ten Delightful Tales’ publication in 2021; 32 pages  –  another delightful little read with photos and pictures, and old newspaper inserts – as with the others I have read in this Series [many more to come], as I’m reading, I wish I was in Ballarat to see many of the remaining buildings that are spoken of in the booklet.

This is Bradley’s third book in the series – the other two summarised below

• AUTHOR and historian Doug Bradby has released two small books as part of a new ongoing miniseries Ten Delightful Tales.
• Bridge Street: The Historic Heart of Ballarat, and Merry Christmas from Historic Ballarat are 32-page publications “full of joy, hope and humour,” looking at life in the city between approximately 1860 and 1920.

“It was a gorgeous period of time. Hard work had paid off, people had a few dollars in their pocket, they had some leisure time, and they didn’t know World War One or The Depression were coming,” Bradby said.

“We race through the Bridge Mall, but in 1850, it was the most exciting place in the world, and it changed the world. Tens of thousands of people got an opportunity in life they otherwise wouldn’t have had.

“Bridge Street as The Historic Heart of Ballarat was fabulous. It never was architecturally wonderful, but it was where Ballarat East and Ballarat West all integrated.”

• Merry Christmas makes the connection between Ballarat residents now and those living in the same neighbourhoods 160 years ago.

“It’s the awareness that they were as human, as good, as bad, as funny and as silly as us. I recognise myself in their humanity, and that’s what history does,” Bradby said.

“You’re living in 2020, reading about them eating Christmas pudding, having funny hats on their heads and playing with crackers in 1860.

“All the things in the book are so recognisable to what we’ll be doing around the 25th and 26th with child-centred days of feasting.”

Now Ballarat is almost through one of its most challenging years, Bradby said “it’s time to take a gulp of happiness and experience joy of living” again through literature.

He hopes people will slow down this summer to savour the written word like wine.

“We need things that are a bit lighter, to celebrate how good it is to be able to communicate with other human beings.

“Anybody who can link back to enjoying the simple things in life; picnics, shopping, promenading and travelling, will enjoy this series,” Bradby said.

“They’re lighter, frothier books than I’ve done before, and I’ve really enjoyed writing them.”

• Bradby is planning to produce more Ten Delightful Tales each month. They are available at Collins on Lydiard and in the Bridge Mall, at Campion Education Sebastopol and Crawford’s Pharmacy.

Mid April, 2021

 ‘Eucalyptus’ by Murray Bail, published in 1998, 255 pages – not sure why I bought this little novel,  3 years ago, guess I was attracted by the awards and prizes it had won. Described on the front cover as ‘The Love Story of the Year’ –  I don’t think so, in my opinion  – certainly an unusual piece of writing, and storyline, yet it was awarded the ‘Winner of the Miles Franklin Literary Award and the Commonwealth Writers Prize;.  I have to wonder about the thinking of some of these book award judges??? Anyway, not a story I will probably remember in years to come, nor would I be sad about that fact.

Certainly, there were lots of short stories related during the book –  most seemingly unrelated and disjointed insertions into the story, together with the regular but spasmodic botanical references to the variety of Eucalyptus trees which dominated the property in question.   Having said all that, if you read the three pages of favourable reviews at the beginning of the book  – well my disquiets are certainly at odds with all of those readers!!

From Booktopia

On a property in western New South Wales a man named Holland lives with his daughter Ellen. Over the years, as she grows into a beautiful young woman, he plants hundreds of different gum trees on his land. When Ellen is nineteen her father announces his decision: she will marry the man who can name all his species of eucalyptus, down to the last tree…
Eucalyptus is a modern fairy tale and an unpredictable love story. Haunting and mesmeric, it illuminates the nature of story-telling itself.

And from Goodreads summary

The gruff widower Holland has two possessions he cherishes above all others: his sprawling property of eucalyptus trees and his ravishingly beautiful daughter, Ellen.
When Ellen turns nineteen Holland makes an announcement: she may marry only the man who can correctly name the species of each of the hundreds of gum trees on his property.
Ellen is uninterested in the many suitors who arrive from around the world, until one afternoon she chances on a strange, handsome young man resting under a Coolibah tree. In the days that follow, he spins dozens of tales set in cities, deserts, and faraway countries. As the contest draws to a close, Ellen and the stranger’s meetings become more erotic, the stories more urgent. Murray Bail’s rich narrative is filled with unexpected wisdom about art, feminine beauty, landscape, and language. Eucalyptus is a shimmering love story that affirms the beguiling power of storytelling itself.

In the June 1998 edition of the ABR, Peter Craven reviews this novel –  I won’t copy all he wrote, except the following –

‘There is a stoical sadness and solemnity to his fictions (which resemble even the more magical forms of realistic novel writing the way a slab hut resembles a townhouse) that comes it seems from the author’s incomprehension and incapacity in the face of anything like novelese. The husband of Helen Garner seems as incapable of telling an involving transparent story where the characters come off the page as he is of flying at the moon. On the contrary, he is a kind of homespun modernist, the sophistication of whose handling of his material is in inverse relation to his own narrative suavity.  Murray Bail has always written with a bit of a clunk. His sentences sing no tune, and he is always in danger of defying the very comprehension of the reader because his material seems so undramatic………’ [had to pay to read on.

Interesting comments from the Sydney Morning Herald [Fe 5^th, 2005]

Its originality won it the Miles Franklin and Commonwealth writers’ prizes. It so beguiled Russell Crowe and Nicole Kidman that they are starring in the film adaptation, in production near Bellingen this week. London’s Evening Standard opined: “You won’t have read anything like it.”

But a Singleton man, John Bennetts, felt he had read something like Murray Bail’s Eucalyptus. He found that several passages from Bail’s novel were word-for-word matches with an out-of-print textbook, Eucalypts Vols One and Two by Stan Kelly, George Chippendale and Robert Johnston, published in 1969 and 1978.

Mr Bennetts said he discovered eight “direct lifts” from the textbook. On page 91 of Eucalyptus, Bail writes of a Eucalyptus maidenii: “The trunk has a short stocking of greyish bark at the base, the upper bark smooth, spotted. Its juvenile foliage is conspicuous and attractive in the undergrowth.”

Of the same tree, the Kelly book says it has “a short stocking of persistent, greyish bark at the base of the trunk, the upper bark being smooth, blotched . . . Its juvenile foliage . . . is conspicuous and attractive in the undergrowth.”

On page 69 of the novel, Bail writes that the Eucalyptus maculata’s beauty “lies in the smooth, clean-looking bark. This is shed in irregular patches, leaving small dimples – hence spotted gum – and as the bark surface ages it changes colour from cream to blue-grey, pink or red, giving a mottled appearance … The flowers are borne in rather large, compound inflorescences, whilst the fruits are ovoid, with short necks and deeply enclosed valves.” Of the same tree, the Kelly text speaks of “the smooth, clean-looking bark. This is shed in irregular patches, leaving small depressions like dimples, and as the bark surface ages it changes colour, from cream to blue-grey, pink or red, giving an interesting, mottled appearance … The flowers are borne in rather large, compound inflorescences, whilst the fruits are ovoid, with a short neck and deeply enclosed valves.”

There are other instances, but, says Bail’s publisher, Michael Heyward, they are “an instance of the novelist as bowerbird rather than any kind of brazen break-and-enter into someone else’s work”. The passages amount to about 180 words in a 90,000-word novel. To label Bail a plagiarist would be disproportionate (if not without precedent: lesser-known writers are routinely flogged for much less) but the absence of acknowledgement raises questions about the nature of literary production.

Bail says a “mix-up” occurred due to “the ridiculous number of bits of paper I had floating around” researching the novel, jottings from books “by people who knew a million more things about eucalypts than I did”. He says: “In an early draft I had these passages in quote marks, but I became concerned that the book was becoming too botanical, too technical. At some stage between drafts I must have ripped out the quotes … I loved the Kelly book … I wanted to put something in the book as a homage to Kelly, and got a fair way towards that, but it was going too far in turning it into a factual book about the trees, so I took it out.

“When you’ve got a novel with a firm thread of fact running through it,” Bail says, “it’s difficult not to let the book get clotted up with it.”

Stan Kelly died recently, but the author of the text in Eucalypts, George Chippendale, now 83 and living in Canberra, said he had read Bail’s novel and enjoyed it. Asked if he recognised his own words, he said: “Not at all!”

Authors as notable as Robert Hughes, Tom Keneally and Colleen McCullough, and as notorious as Helen Darville, have been accused of plagiarism for as little as a few words. This week, Jessica Adams was accused in The Australian of copying a plot from Agatha Christie for a short story she donated to The Big Issue. Adams denied the claim. Being nationally “exposed” as a formula writer cribbing from another formula writer, for no money and a tiny audience, shows how virulently the stain of plagiarism can spread. The writer Peter Rose, a Miles Franklin judge in 1998, the year Eucalyptus won, says “plagiarism has an amazing stigma and taboo”.

Bail places the correspondences between his writing and Chippendale’s into the broader texture of his writing, and much other literature and art, where one creator aims a “nod or a wink” at another. Within Eucalyptus, there is a pattern of unacknowledged references to Patrick White and Nikolai Gogol, among others. Bail’s earlier story, The Drover’s Wife, was a direct reply to Henry Lawson’s story of the same name. In his Miles Franklin acceptance speech, he said: “It becomes more and more difficult to create something individual and distinctive, yet … worthwhile. Even then the novelist is standing on the shoulders of others before him, or her.”

Heyward, part-owner of Text Publishing, says: “Bail’s story, vision, characters, language are absolutely his own, and it’s fascinating how the tone of the words from Kelly’s book changes in their new context: they become laconic, po-faced, as they are absorbed into the fabric of the story.”

This kind of conversation between different works is part of the orthodox repertoire in art. To include readers in the joke, modernist writers offer signposts, as Bail did with The Drover’s Wife, or use famous phrases, as Bail did in Eucalyptus in playing with Patrick White’s “dun-coloured realism”. Yet the practice is riskier when the source text is both unknown and unacknowledged. A reader may praise an author’s original ability to mimic a type of language without knowing he has in fact copied it.

The judges of the Miles Franklin, for instance, responded to Chippendale’s writing thinking it was Bail’s. “We assumed he had read a lot of natural history textbooks,” Rose says of his discussions with other Franklin judges, “but we read [Eucalyptus] as a work of the imagination.” He stressed that Bail had committed only “a minor fault”, which could have been solved with an acknowledgement. “It’s always prudent to acknowledge, to avert confusion or awkwardness afterwards.”

Bail has himself been on the other side of this debate, when he found “exact details and sentences and phrases from a monograph I’d written on [the artist] Ian Fairweather pop up in quite a well-known novel. I got indignant for a while, but then I thought the author had used my work for general information and there wasn’t anything too wrong with it.”

Nonetheless, he says he is “normally very courteous” about acknowledging sources, and will talk to his publisher about putting in an acknowledgement in future editions of Eucalyptus.

26^th,  April, 2021

 ‘The Saddler Boys’ by Fiona Palmer, published in 2015, 362 pages  –  indeed, a good old fashioned love story, with demonstrated passion for the land, the people, and a rural life. A thoroughly enjoyable read for which  I put aside ‘The Reformation’ for a few days, as I felt like a bit of light reading. This was the second book I purchased from the QBD bookshop in Melton, on the way back from lunch with Heather, on the 9^th April.

A bit of a tear-jerker in many aspects [though it is easy to create that sensation in this reader these days].  Fiona Palmer is one of a number of female Australian authors who write novels about rural life in particular. I guess the storyline written to ensure that ‘true love’ won out in the end, but I was not unhappy about that.  I planned to email the author a brief appreciation of her story.

From Goodreads

Schoolteacher Natalie has always been a city girl. She has a handsome boyfriend and a family who give her only the best. But she craves her own space, and her own classroom, before settling down into the life she is expected to lead.  When Nat takes up a posting at a tiny school in remote Western Australia, it proves quite the culture shock, but she is soon welcomed by the swarm of inquisitive locals, particularly young student Billy and his intriguing single father, Drew. 

As Nat’s school comes under threat of closure, and Billy’s estranged mother turns up out of the blue, Nat finds herself fighting for the township and battling with her heart. Torn between her life in Perth and the new community that needs her, Nat must risk losing it all to find out what she’s really made of – and where she truly belongs. 

The Weekly Times

This is a book about rural Australia, love gained and lost, and fighting for what you believe in. But, unlike many books in the same genre,The Saddler Boys is subtly about so much more.’Weekly Times

Email written to the author:

Hello Fiona,    I just felt I’d like to drop you a line after having read ‘The Saddler Boys’.

While I know you wrote this some years ago, I picked it up in in a store the other day, having recalled reading two earlier novels of yours – ‘The Road Home’ and ‘The Outback Heart’.

I must admit, I’m usually reading much heavier material, re politics, biographies and histories, etc, but now and then search for something a little lighter and quick reading.

Hence ‘The Saddler Boys’ which I thoroughly enjoyed from beginning to end  – your passion for the rural life and the people in it, I find really refreshing and a pleasant read.

So thank you again –  I think there are many others of your stories I need to search out!!

With kindest regards and wishes for ongoing success in future writings.

Bill Kirk [Sunbury, Victoria];  billjkirk5358@gmail.com

And the author’s reply

Hi Bill,

Lovely to hear from you. Thank you for reading The Saddler Boys. I wrote 8 rurals as a way to write about the life I love so much. I have sinced moved more broader fiction but I hope to write more rurals one day. I live the life everyday (we are flat our seeding at the moment, long days…12 to 15hours and then I’m trying to get edits done on my next book!)

I aim to make my books a quick enjoyable read. Being so busy I like books easy to get into, finish them quick and leave me happy.

Thanks again for your email, it made my day.

All the best,

Fiona

Late May, 2021

Writers on Writers: Thomas Keneally by Stan Grant, published in 2021, 90 pages.  I general impression – Stan Grant did not like Keneally’s interpretation of Jimmy Blacksmith [or real name, Jimmy Governor]  –  he felt it was a white man’s depiction of Governor, and Aborigines in general, not the real Indigenous ‘Governor’. A lot of comment about Bruce Pascoe’s book ‘Black Emu’ which Grant seem to be much more favourable towards. At times I felt Grant’s writing was too pro-Aboriginal/anti White, although he tries to argue that is not the case, despite his own Indigenous background.  Overall, I felt Keneally got much less attention in this short ‘essay’ than perhaps should have been the intention of the Series!!!  Just my view  –  some other comments, as follows.

State Library of Victoria [the publisher]

• On Thomas Keneally is the latest instalment of the Writers on Writers series, in which leading writers reflect on another Australian writer who has inspired and influenced them. Provocative and crisp, these books start a fresh conversation between past and present, shed new light on the craft of writing, and introduce some intriguing and talented authors and their work.  In his book, Stan weaves literary criticism, philosophy and memoir to shed light on The chant of Jimmie Blacksmith. Drawing parallels with Indigenous writers Tara June Winch and Bruce Pascoe, Grant re-examines Keneally’s novel, raising questions about identity, modernity and storytelling.
• Google:  Keneally’s caricature of a self-loathing Jimmie Blacksmith is a lost opportunity to explore the complex ways that Aboriginal people . . . were pushing against a white world that would not accept them for who they were; that would not see them as equal; that, in truth, would not see them as human. …
• Hobart Book shop

A thoughtful’ nuanced look at Thomas Keneally’s The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith by award-winning journalist Stan Grant’ which considers race’ representation and Australian history. Stan Grant is drawn to Thomas Keneally ‘for many reasons- we share an Irish heritage and a complicated relationship with religion. I am especially interested in The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith’ which was a formative novel for me. My family shares a connection with the real Jimmy Governor as well. The book raises questions about non-Indigenous writers tackling Indigenous issues and characters.’ In this eloquent’ clear-eyed essay’ acclaimed journalist Stan Grant sheds light on one of Australia’s most controversial yet enduringly relevant novels. In the Writers on Writers series’ leading authors reflect on an Australian writer who has inspired and fascinated them. Provocative and crisp’ these books start a fresh conversation between past and present’ shed new light on the craft of writing’ and introduce some intriguing and talented authors and their work. Published by Black Inc. in association with the University of Melbourne and State Library Victoria.

• Sydney Writers Festival

Thomas Keneally reflects on his esteemed career in conversation with his long-time friend Stan Grant. Thomas’ 1972 Booker Prize–nominated story of a black man’s revenge against an unjust society, The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, was a formative novel for Stan, helping the young reporter recognise the contradictions at the heart of our national identity. Stan has written the latest instalment of the Writers on Writers series on Thomas. The two take to the stage to continue a long-running conversation about their body of work and friendship.

22^nd May, 2021

Ten Delightful Tales: Lake Wendouree: ‘Pleasing to the Eye, Satisfying to the Soul’, introduced by Doug Bradby’, published 2021, 32 pages   – another pleasing read from this series, bringing back memories of Ballarat,.

 “You’re living in 2020  “All the things in the books are so recognisable to what we’ll be doing around the 25th and 26th with child-centred days of feasting.”  Now Ballarat is almost through one of its most challenging years, Bradby said “it’s time to take a gulp of happiness and experience joy of living” again through literature. He hopes people will slow down this summer to savour the written word like wine. “We need things that are a bit lighter, to celebrate how good it is to be able to communicate with other human beings. “Anybody who can link back to enjoying the simple things in life; picnics, shopping, promenading and travelling, will enjoy this series,” Bradby said. “They’re lighter, frothier books than I’ve done before, and I’ve really enjoyed writing them.”  Bradby is planning to produce more Ten Delightful Tales each month. They are available at Collins on Lydiard and in the Bridge Mall, at Campion Education Sebastopol and Crawford’s Pharmacy.

24^th May, 2021

–  ‘The Reformation in England’ Vol 2  by J.H.Merle d’Aubigne, first published in 1866-78, this edition printed in 1977, 507 pages. – a rather heavy and at times [most of the time] disturbing piece of reading   But also, an amazing educational read –  at times difficult to distinguish just which side of Christianity was been favoured, not just by the King [Henry VIII] but by the various sectors of the England  of the 1500’s –  it would have been a very dangerous era to live in if you had any kind of attachment to Christianity – beginning with a breaking away from the Pope and the Roman Catholic doctrines –  forms of reform, be they a moderate version of Catholic, an Evangelical style, complete reform away from Catholic, the Church [Anglican] of England  –  generally if you lived or died, depended on the religious views of Henry VIII at any time  –  views which changed through the years of ‘reform’ meaning loyal supporters, friends, even wives, could suddenly become the enemy, with execution in most cases the outcome, whoever you were.

King Henry VIII, born 28/6/1491; died 28/1/1547, his six wives were:

• Katherine, married 1509; marriage annulled on 23/5/1533;
• Anne of Boleyn, married25/1/1533; executed 19/5/1536;
• Jane Seymour, married 30/5/1536; died natural causes 24/10/1537;
• Anne of Cleves, married 6/1/1540; marriage annulled 9/7/1540;
• Katherine Howard:  married 18/7/1540, executed 13/2/1542; and
• Katherine Parr, married 12/7/1543, died 7/9/1548 [after the King’s death on 28/1/1547].

From Amazon –

• ‘Here is no dry as dust story. the work is of immense learning…but is popular in the best sense. Short chapters and rapid scene changes give the story movement, and human interest is always to the fore.’
• Quoted price of hardcover version: $2,400.00; Paperback: $59.00

Heritage Books [and] BannerofTruth Books, the publisher in this case]

• When the present publisher first issued The Reformation in England in 1962, it was hoped, in the words of its editor, S. M. Houghton, that it would ‘be a major contribution to the religious needs of the present age, and that it [would] lead to the strengthening of the foundations of a wonderful God-given heritage of truth’.

In many ways there has been such a strengthening. Renewed interest in the Reformation and the study of the Reformers’ teaching has brought forth much good literature, and has provided strength to existing churches, and a fresh impetus for the planting of biblical churches.

Concurrent with this development in the life of the churches, however, has been a dramatic shift in Western society at large. In the decades since the 1960s, the de-Christianization of society at a cultural and legislative level has been rapid. Biblical illiteracy is the norm. Secularism now dominates the Continent that witnessed the reforming work of Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin, Tyndale, Cranmer, and Knox.

In this hostile intellectual climate, d’Aubigné’s work again provides a means for Christians to place themselves in history. The Reformation in England brings to mind the important part that Reformers and Martyrs played in the development of our now fragile modern freedoms.  Above all, however, this work bears testimony to the power of the Spirit of God in the lives of individuals, churches, and nations. D’Aubigné wrote as a serious historian, but also, and crucially, as a pastor who had a deep understanding of the way in which God sovereignly acts in providence to bring about his purposes.

Gripping in its prose, yet far from sensationalist, this colourful record of the period is one which will be appreciated by spiritually-minded Christians everywhere.

From Goodreads: 

• Dr Merle d’Aubigne(1794-1872) devoted a lifetime to the study of the Reformation. His Spiritual insight remains unsurpassed.

5^th June 2021

‘The Tavern on Maple Street’ by Sharon Owens, published in 2005,  321 pages.  I bit of light reading, amongst some of the more serious books I’m reading at present,  a pleasant change, bit of a love story[s] in some ways, situated in Belfast, Ireland, where the book was first published, this edition published by Penguin.

From Goodreads: 

• Beautiful Lily Beaumont and her husband Jack are owners of a genuine Victorian tavern, situated on one of Belfast’s few remaining narrow cobbled streets. It’s a favourite among the locals who love the quiet atmosphere, good beer, and simple food. Then one day, Dublin-based developer Vincent Halloran arrives with big plans for Maple Street. The other traders are keen to sell up and retire, but Jack and Lily aren’t ready to call `time, please’ on their beloved tavern. Instead Lily hires four pretty barmaids to bring in the customers. Enter pint-sized, man-eater Bridget, lazy art-student Daisy, neurotic Trudy, and painfully shy Marie. And if the stakes for Lily and Jack weren’t already high enough, there’s a secret about the Maple Street tavern that has yet to be discovered. A secret that will redefine the meaning of love, friendship, and family in the most surprising ways .

From www.fantasticfiction:  .

• An irresistible novel brimming with wit, warmth, and Irish humor, about the married owners of a friendly tavern in Belfast and the intimate lives of the customers and employees who band together to save it from demolition.
  Jack Beaumont and his beautiful wife, Lily, are the owners of the tavern on Maple Street, a tiny Victorian pub they inherited from Jack’s great-uncle Ernest. It’s a quiet place, untouched by the modern world, and that’s why the customers like it so much.
  But a property developer wants to demolish the tavern and build a shopping mall on Maple Street. Jack and Lily and their little home-away-from-home are suddenly plunged into the limelight, caught in a desperate struggle to save their business from the bulldozers-or, with the help of some new employees, to at least make as much money as possible during their last few months as landlord and landlady.
  In The Tavern on Maple Street, Sharon Owens delivers another delicious sparkler full of love, friendship, relationships, and the day-to-day lives of ordinary people, one that is sure to satisfy readers’ insatiable appetite for her romantic and quirky Belfast tales.

23^rd June 2021

Meanwhile, this afternoon, I finished reading ‘Breaker Morant’ by Peter FitzSimons, published in 2020, 647 pages:  as I would write on the inside cover pages –  another masterpiece by FitzSimons – presenting as true a depiction of the Breaker Morant story, then perhaps has been told elsewhere by others. I was shocked at the treatment of the Boers [not just the military side] by the English [British] forces – especially the use of the concentration camps, little better in my view than those of Nazi Germany – except in this case, those confined were not killed or murdered outright generally, but were ‘allowed’ to die through lack of any kind of humanity – and 40 years later, the rest of the world [including the English] condemns [and rightly so] the Nazi camps used to try and obliterate the Jewish populace of Europe.

By the end of the conflict in 1902, according to FitzSimon’s figures, 30,000 Boer homesteads had been destroyed [not as causalities of battles but as part of a deliberate policy by the English], likewise, tens of thousands of the ‘homes’ of the Boers African labourers, 40 Boer towns razed, and 28,000 white civilians alone, lost their lives. As the author also notes, many of the whites’ African slaves also died but ‘for the latter, no-one was particularly counting’

[an aside, sadly man & nations don’t learn from these occurrences, as even in 2021, human tragedies of like nature, continue to occur in various parts of the world].

A couple of reviews and comments of a more professional nature. My bleak references to the ‘conflict’, are detailed and explained in much fuller fashion,  in the Canberra Times review which I’ve copied in full below.

From Booktopia

• The epic story of the Boer War and Harry ‘Breaker’ Morant: drover, horseman, bush poet – murderer or hero?
  Most Australians have heard of the Boer War of 1899 to 1902 and of Harry ‘Breaker’ Morant, a figure who rivals Ned Kelly as an archetypal Australian folk hero. Born in England and emigrating to Queensland in 1883 in his early twenties, Morant was a charming but reckless man who established a reputation as a rider, polo player and writer. He submitted ballads to The Bulletin that were published under the name ‘The Breaker’ and counted Banjo Paterson as a friend. When appeals were made for horsemen to serve in the war in South Africa, Morant joined up, first with the South Australian Mounted Rifles and then with a South African irregular unit, the Bushveldt Carbineers.
  In September 1901 Morant and two other Australians, Lieutenants Peter Handcock and George Witton, were arrested for the murder of Boer prisoners. Morant and Handcock were court-martialled and executed in February 1902 as the Boer War was in its closing stages, but the debate over their convictions continues to this day.
  Does Breaker Morant deserve his iconic status? Who was Harry Morant? What events and passions led him to a conflict that was essentially an Imperial war, played out on a distant continent under a foreign flag? Was he a scapegoat for British war crimes or a criminal himself?
  With his trademark brilliant command of story, Peter FitzSimons unravels the many myths and fictions that surround the life of Harry Morant. The truths FitzSimons uncovers about ‘The Breaker’ and the part he played in the Boer War are astonishing – and, in the hands of this master storyteller, make compelling reading.

From the Canberra Times [Michael McKernan, Dec 2020]

• Peter FitzSimons is an Australian phenomenon. He is our greatest storyteller. Writing, it seems, a couple of books a year, every year, for a long time, he sells extremely well. It is team work, he openly admits, employing a team of researchers as dedicated as he is to the stories he tells.
• Usually Fitzsimmons celebrates and applauds – great men, remarkable, uplifting events – James Cook, Ned Kelly, Charles Kingsford-Smith and great and successful Australian battles, Gallipoli, Kokoda, Villers-Bretonneux. His many readers feel better – about our country, about our story – after reading a FitzSimons yarn.

But not Breaker Morant. This is a dark, black book about grievous moral failure, about a wrongly conceived and dreadful, appalling war, and about the destruction of a society and its people. Before it was over, there were 115 000 Boers, mostly women and children, in concentration camps, terribly housed, barely fed, diseased and dying in awful numbers.

FitzSimons can find little good in Harry Harbord Morant, the “Breaker”. Morant lies as easily as he tells the time, consistently and always. He has several versions of his family background and education, all of them untrue. He takes people’s money, their wives and anything they hold precious.

He marauds and drinks his way through Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia. He is a wonderful horseman, an entertainer and a popular versifier but there is more to him than that. He is also a murderer.

Convicted of the murder of 12 people and shot by firing squad, it is certain that Morant’s tally of death was greater. One was a much-loved missionary, most were unarmed Boer prisoners.

He treated the prisoners well, he claimed, until the Boers tortured, murdered and mutilated the body of his good friend, Captain Percy Hunt. The Boers did no such thing. Hunt was killed attacking a heavily defended house. His body was untouched apart from the bullet wound to his heart.

There is much more to this book than an account of this one evil man. FitzSimons finds the entire war a terrible catastrophe. Lord Kitchener, the man in overall command, invented the idea of the concentration camps and the destruction of farm houses and farms. He creates a desert where once farming thrived.

A cold, charmless man, Kitchener was also adept at picking precisely the wrong person for the job and backing him to the hilt. FitzSimons argues Kitchener was prepared to win the war by the total annihilation of the Boer population and society. Eventually those in power in London could not allow this to happen.

There are others too, perhaps none more despicable, calculating and murderous than Captain Alfred Taylor, manipulating lesser soldiers like Captain Hunt and Morant.

Though placed before a court martial alongside Morant, Handcock and Whitten, Taylor’s cool, incisive mind saw him convincing the court martial of his innocence of all charges.

Taylor saw out his life on his farm in Rhodesia, unpunished and dying, in his bed, at the age of 79. In FitzSimons’ view he was “the most guilty, the one most responsible for the many atrocities that occurred”.

It will dawn on the reader slowly that this is a book for our times. If some Australians fighting in Afghanistan have been validly accused of war crimes, the Australian government will need to respond to this. Peter FitzSimons has written a book about war crimes in a different country and in a different war.

Make no mistake though, this is a book about a variety of revolting war crimes and crimes against humanity.

There is some light, however, in this bleak, black account of the war. FitzSimons writes in his characteristic way – a style not to everyone’s taste – but, for the most part, graphic, engaging and highly readable.

He also finds an action to celebrate with determined, hard-working, successful and brave Australian soldiers to applaud to the full. This is his account of the Battle of Elands River, where a small number of Australians held off an overwhelming Boer force for several days, holding a vital post.

He tells of the bravery and determination of Queenslander Lieutenant James Annat, “a very popular if quietly spoken officer in his mid-thirties” – “as game a man as ever lived”, one of his soldiers wrote admiringly to his family. There is not very much else in this book to celebrate.

Breaker Morant marks an evolution in Peter Fitzsimons’ work as a writer. It is an important book, powerful in its grim telling, requiring the reader to think carefully and weigh up the moral conundrums FitzSimons exposes.

Breaker Morant may well be Peter FitzSimons best book so far. It deserves a wide and thoughtful readership.

26^th June 2021

‘New Guinea: Nature and Culture of Earth’s Grandest Island by Bruce M. Beehier, photography by Tim Laman, published in 2020, 376 pages  –  a great read, a little difficult at times with all of the descriptive types of animals, birds, sea life , vegetation, geographic features, and so on –  I had anticipated the book would be more about the people of New Guinea, but it provided a much wider scope than that. Overall, very interesting, and a valuable addition to my library, to be a proud owner of.

Media Review:

• “A great introduction to the natural history of New Guinea, this book is remarkably thorough in its breadth and depth. Beehler is a noted authority on many of the subjects covered, from the island’s birds to its ecology. He provides an excellent description of a ‘traditional’ New Guinea village of today, and gives a feeling for what the island’s untouched forest is really like. And Tim Laman’s photographs are great.”
  – John P. Dumbacher, California Academy of Sciences  “With its excellent photos, this is a highly readable and appealing account of the natural and cultural history of New Guinea. There really isn’t any book comparable to this.”– Allen Allison, Bishop Museum, Honolulu

And from Amazon

• An enthralling exploration of the biologically richest island on Earth, featuring more than 200 spectacular colour images by award-winning National Geographic photographer Tim Laman

In this beautiful book, Bruce Beehler, a renowned author and expert on New Guinea, and award-winning National Geographic photographer Tim Laman take the reader on an unforgettable journey through the natural and cultural wonders of the world’s grandest island. Skillfully combining a wealth of information, a descriptive and story-filled narrative, and more than 200 stunning colour photographs, the book unlocks New Guinea’s remarkable secrets like never before.

Lying between the Equator and Australia’s north coast, and surrounded by the richest coral reefs on Earth, New Guinea is the world’s largest, highest, and most environmentally complex tropical island ― home to rainforests with showy rhododendrons, strange and colourful orchids, tree-kangaroos, spiny anteaters, ingenious bowerbirds, and spectacular birds of paradise. New Guinea is also home to more than a thousand traditional human societies, each with its own language and lifestyle, and many of these tribes still live in isolated villages and serve as stewards of the rainforests they inhabit.

Accessible and authoritative, New Guinea provides a comprehensive introduction to the island’s environment, animals, plants, and traditional rainforest cultures. Individual chapters cover the island’s history of exploration; geology; climate and weather; biogeography; plantlife; insects, spiders, and other invertebrates; freshwater fishes; snakes, lizards, and frogs; birdlife; mammals; paleontology; paleoanthropology; cultural and linguistic diversity; surrounding islands and reefs; the pristine forest of the Foja Mountains; village life; and future sustainability.

Complete with informative illustrations and a large, detailed map, New Guinea offers an enchanting account of the island’s unequalled natural and cultural treasures.

5^th July, 2021

‘The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet’ by Colleen McCullough, published in 2008, 467 pages  –  a great read,  a wonderful and interesting imaginary follow-up to Jane Austen’s novel ‘Pride and Prejudice’, I really enjoyed this story and the depiction of the time and era in which it was written.  Some of the old novels from that era do leave you wondering what might happen ‘down the track’ [or laneway!!].  I purchased this book at the Woodend bookshop [on 21 May, 2021] on the way back from most recent meet up with Heather, at Daylesford.

From ‘Goodreads’   – 

• ‘Everyone knows the story of Elizabeth and Jane Bennet in “Pride and Prejudice.” But what about their sister Mary? At the conclusion of Jane Austen’s classic novel, Mary, bookish, awkward, and by all accounts, unmarriageable, is sentenced to a dull, provincial existence in the backwaters of Britain. Now, master storyteller Colleen McCullough rescues Mary from her dreary fate with “The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet,” a page-turning sequel set twenty years after Austen’s novel closes.

The story begins as the neglected Bennet sister is released from the stultifying duty of caring for her insufferable mother. Though many would call a woman of Mary’s age a spinster, she has blossomed into a beauty to rival that of her famed sisters. Her violet eyes and perfect figure bewitch the eligible men in the neighborhood, but though her family urges her to marry, romance and frippery hold no attraction. Instead, she is determined to set off on an adventure of her own. Fired with zeal by the newspaper letters of the mysterious Argus, she resolves to publish a book about the plight of England’s poor. Plunging from one predicament into another, Mary finds herself stumbling closer to long-buried secrets, unanticipated dangers, and unlooked-for romance.

Meanwhile, the other dearly loved characters of “Pride and Prejudice” fret about the missing Mary while they contend with difficulties of their own. Darcy’s political ambitions consume his ardor, and he bothers with Elizabeth only when the impropriety of her family seems to threaten his career. Lydia, wild and charming as ever, drinks and philanders her way into dire straits; Kitty, a young widow of means, occupies herself with gossip and shopping; and Jane, naive and trusting as ever, spends her days ministering to her crop of boys and her adoring, if not entirely faithful, husband.

Yet, with the shadowy and mysterious figure of Darcy’s right-hand man, Ned Skinner, lurking at every corner, it is clear that all is not what it seems at idyllic Pemberley. As the many threads of McCullough’s masterful plot come together, shocking truths are revealed, love, both old and new, is tested, and all learn the value of true independence in a novel for every woman who has wanted to leave her mark on the world.’ 

And a personal review by the ABC’s Melanie Telford

• I read this book because it was a sequel to Pride and Prejudice.

It is the first Colleen McCullough I have read and I thoroughly enjoyed the main plot as well as returning to the Bennet sisters 20 years after the marriage of Elizabeth to Mr Darcy.

After the death of Mrs Bennet, Mary, who has been caretaking her mother in a large residence, is now free to do as she pleases. Mary has been isolated from any real life, but has had free access to books usually kept from 18th century women.

As a consequence, she is a well read but naive and eccentric. Motivated by her infatuation with a social activist newspaper columnist, Mary decides she will write a book, touring the country and reporting on the ills of England – much to the horror of Mr Darcy and the Bennet sisters.

Early along her journey, Mary is abducted by a crazed cult leader. The narrative of mystery and intrigue that follows, will entertain a wider audience, while Jane Austen fans enjoy revisiting their favourite characters as they come together in their search for Mary.

D’arcy fans will be initially disappointed by the faltering relationship between Elizabeth and Darcy, and by Darcy’s cold, self fulfilling character. However this setting allows McCullough to revisit the successful Pride and Prejudice formula between Lizzy and Darcy as well as Mary Bennet and her suitor.

Jane Austen fans will need to get past some tacky language and conversation topics used by McCullough to demonstrate Mary’s eccentricities, Lydia’s appalling social condition, and the modernization of the Bennet sisters.  While the dialogue may seem unlikely to some readers, it may not be as historically inaccurate as it seems. I have read other sequels to Pride and Prejudice where unconvincing and bizarre social interaction has later been shown to be historically plausible. I would enjoy reading an appraisal by a reputable social historian in this matter.  I was initially disappointed by the state of affairs between Darcy and Elizabeth, but was drawn in by a good page turning plot which I enjoyed all the way to a satisfying conclusion where love prevails and Mr Darcy returns to his pedestal.

[In retrospect, perhaps I enjoyed this story because of it’s familiarity – I’d previously purchased, and completed reading a copy back on the 18 February 2016, having purchased the book 4 days earlier at Melton!!!  My recollections are dwindling!!.  My comment at the time – ‘A delightful story – I have not read enough of this author’. Since then, have read the majority of Colleen McCullough’s general novels, although have found it hard to get involved into her ‘Roman’ series of stories, though most of them are on my shelf – a future project!!]

Finished reading on the 7^th September  –   ‘Let The Land Speak’ by Jackie French, published in 2013, 440 pages:  a history of Australia: How the land created our nation. 

A very interesting read, and in the main, presented to a large degree from the Indigenous perspective. Though not to the same degree of ‘almost unbelievable far-fetched’ ideas of Bruce Pascoe, in ‘Dark Emu’ or Bill Gammage’s ‘The Biggest Estate on Earth’, there were certainly strong parallel’s between all three writers in respect to the impact that the originals Australians had on the land,  and a strong negative comparison, with the disastrous affect the European civilisation and early decade farming methods had on the land they ‘inherited’ from the Indigenous peoples.

The book was written from a strongly personal viewpoint by a writer who has lived on the land and observed the changes which have occurred  over the decades.  If she’s not sure of the answer, she provides her theory while acknowledging quite often, that she doesn’t claim her view to be the final word.  I think the biggest suggestion I obtained from the book –  our early settlers from the UK and similar countries, tried to adopt  the English way of farming onto an environment which was totally alien to those methods, and in doing so over the decades, basically destroyed the landscape and environment that the original Australians had managed so well, despite whatever historical claims and assumptions have been applied over the years.

Another reviewer commented that ‘Her work is often concerned with the truth of Australian Aboriginal heritage and contemporary circumstances, with history that’s been forgotten, wilfully misunderstood or deliberately shunned, and a deep and abiding love and respect for the land.’[Shannon].

As stated on the back cover: “To understand Australia’s history, you need to look at how the land has shaped not just our past, but will continue to shape our future’.

To explain the book in more detail, the following are a few more professional reviewers and opinions on the book, to encourage readers.

From BookTopia

To understand the present, you need to understand the past. to understand Australia’s history, you need to look at how the land has shaped not just our past, but will continue to shape our future.

From highly respected, award-winning author Jackie French comes a new and fascinating interpretation of Australian history, focusing on how the land itself, rather than social forces, shaped the major events that led to modern Australia.

Our history is mostly written by those who live, work and research in cities, but it’s the land itself which has shaped our history far more powerfully and significantly than we realise. Reinterpreting the history we think we all know – from the indigenous women who shaped the land, from terra Incognita to Eureka, from Federation to Gallipoli and beyond, Jackie French shows us that to understand our history, we need to understand our land. taking us behind history and the accepted version of events, she also shows us that there’s so much we don’t understand about our history because we simply don’t understand the way life was lived at the time.

Eye-opening, refreshing, completely fascinating and unforgettable, Let the Land Speak will transform the way we understand the role and influence of the land and how it has shaped our nation.

A review from 29 March,  2014 on  hercanberra.com.au

I knew when I first heard about Jackie French’s upcoming work on the land that the result would be much more than a book about the geographical elements that comprise our great country. I knew it would be very much about this, but I also knew it would be about spirit. About heart. About an almost ethereal human connection to the land that so many of us fail to feel, even after a lifetime.

And I was right. This is our land through the eyes of one who is deeply in love with every intimate part of its geographical structure, its history, its people—its soul.

Let the Land Speak is, in part, biographical. It is about one woman’s journey, from her oyster-shucking days in Darling Harbour as a child, fossicking along the rocks to find the abundant food available, just as it was when the First Fleet arrived, to the many hours she has spent with Aboriginal women in her later adulthood—women who have passed on innate knowledge and land-connection from millennia past.

It is also an historical account. Opening with the arrival of Captain Cook’s Endeavour, we are taken back in time to first see the ‘real’ Australia encountered by white man. We are introduced to five hundred years of misunderstandings as to how white man first approached this land and how it was subsequently settled.

And my goodness, it is eye-opening.

We are told of the Real First Fleet—the people who came by boat around 60,000 years ago. We are given a vivid picture of the land as it was then, and we are gradually transported to the land we have now. The drought-hardened, flood-ravaged, raw, wild, beautiful land new settlers tried with all their might to turn into the sweet green fields of England, dotted with fluffy white sheep and crops that would never stand a chance.

This is an extraordinary, comprehensive, information-crammed tome that is at once mindboggling in fascinating content, and extremely emotional to read. It made me realise that, like many Australians, I have lived a life more or less detached from the land. Growing up as a teen on the Central Coast of New South Wales, I felt more of an affinity with the ocean than I did the land, and then moving from city to major city thereafter, I again felt more connection to the manmade than I ever did to nature.

As a result, I felt profoundly moved to read of Jackie’s closeness to the land—her ability to predict weather patterns, rains and drought, simply by smell, the mating calls of animals, and the condition and flourishing of plants and trees each and every season in her beloved Araluen Valley in southern tablelands of New South Wales.

French’s book is a holistic view of the place we all inhabit—a land that is tough, has always been tough, and will continue to be tough to live on. It is tough to farm, tough to survive, tough to control—and Let the Land Speak asks us to look at the possibility of releasing this need to control. Of living in harmony with our environment, and allowing it to return to a balance and a beauty that has been—and continues to be—rapidly lost.

It is a cry for help. It is a call to action. And it will not fail to move you.

As we age and become more attuned to our history, and more aware of the possibility held in our future, returning to the land and developing a relationship with earth is an emotional journey. From the plight of the Great Barrier Reef to the life of our farming folk, from the earth-scourging mining industry to the perilous insistence we have to build homes where fire comes and where corroding coastlines will soon wash all into the sea, the overriding messaging in Let the Land Speak is in listening. Stopping. Watching. Becoming one with our land.

This is an important book, and a must-read for all Australians, for it contains messaging we simply can’t ignore. In the words of Jackie herself: “We need to listen to our land. If we fail, we will stumble into a future we can neither predict nor understand.”

A comment from a reader [Paul Daltron]  – 

I enjoyed this book. I liked reading Jackie French’s reflections based on her observation, over the past 40 years, of changes in the ecosystem of the Araluen valley, south-east of Canberra. The first 3/4 of the book, illustrating ways in which the climate and landscape have influenced human and social development in Australia over the past 60,000 years, were the most interesting.

While from Rachel  – 

I really enjoyed this book. While it is as much storytelling as it is history, Jackie’s perspective as a woman and a farmer provided me with new perspectives on well known events. I felt the thesis was stretched a little thin in the middle of the book, but the start and finish kept me well engaged. I am in awe of Jackie’s knowledge of her local area and what she’s learnt through observing it. This book hopefully will help me observe and understand more too. 

While Shannon, mentioned earlier. Further noted that

 have always believed that Australians – both Indigenous (which would seem obvious) and ‘white’ Australians – are and have been shaped by the land. That all the stereotypes associated with Australians – from the positive (laconic and irreverent sense of humour; self-deprecating abhorrence of ‘tall poppies’; community spirit and neighbourliness; bravery and courage; hard-working; laid-back and easy-going; innovative; friendly and welcoming) to the negative (racist etc.) – have their roots in our relationship with the land and what it takes to survive here, whether you adapt to it as the Aboriginals did, or whether you try to mould it into a semblance of an English pastoral landscape as the British did. This understanding started to form when I was studying for my undergrad many years ago; Let the Land Speak confirms and explains it.

Other

The following article, written by former ABC radio presenter and commentator, Jon Faine [whose aggressive posturing with interviewees I often found distasteful] is rather relevant at this time to the ‘crisis’ [as some would describe it] facing the British Royal Family. I think enough has been presented world-wide  in recent days about that issue, so I won’t dwell on it except to say, I felt Jon’s article on this occasion was worth sharing.

With respect especially to the Victoria situation and the processes that Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews is proposing,  I think the context and history of what that issue is referring to be should be made aware to all of us  – for too long, we have hidden behind the old format text-book presentations of our State [and Nation’s history] of what our education system, and governments wanted us to believe. Those views have gradually started to change and evolve over recent years, as they should have.

Jon Faine’s comments complement another article in the same edition of the Sunday Age, too lengthy to comment on here, but a useful piece of relevant reading for all who are genuinely interested in how our history really happened, rather than just simply what we were told at school!! Titled ‘Ground Rules’, the writer speaks to First Nations [Indigenous] Victorians and asks the question as to whether telling the truth of this state’s ‘real’ history of it’s response to Aboriginal communities in early settlement days, and even up to modern times in some cases, would lead to a treaty of some sort.  For example, one representative states “There is a brutal history down here in the south-west [of Victoria], and that needs to be told…it was domestic terrorism, the way our mob were treated….But there’s this gap in history. This gap is knowledge”. However, as Jon Faine suggests below [on both aspects of his article] for too long, we have put our fingers in our ears and said ‘I would rather not know’!!

In any case, here is Jon’s article for the benefit of those interested in reading further..

Family – and racist past – both Victoria [the State] and the Windsors have racist pasts to face up to. Only one is doing it.

Two appeals were made this week to deal with uncomfortable truths. Meghan, ex-Duchess of Something-or-Other, asked us to believe that at least one person – someone important – in our Australian Royal Household is a racist.

Meanwhile Dan Andrews has unveiled a unique process to consider that colonial Victoria has a racist past – that early settlers held secrets to be divulged if only we go the right way about asking the right questions.

Both are compelling challenges. Both require an unflinching gaze. Both tell us something about ourselves, although many people will put their fingers in their ears and say “I would rather not know”. Here is why they should listen – here is why we MUST listen.

‘Our’ Royals are literally the most entitled people on the planet – it is not possible to be more entitled than having a title. Their insistence on the antiquated protocols and pointless archaic etiquette to match is all evidence of unfathomable privilege.  Apparently, they have special blood and by reason of ancient birthright are not like their ‘subjects’.

Whether you like it or not, these feudal concepts linger in our contemporary democracy, and are the foundation fantasy of our Constitution. Despite them being the opposite of that most Australian ethos of a ‘fair go’ for all. Enough is enough. Our continuing dependence on this nonsense is embarrassing.

Meanwhile, the same day, in a case of serendipitous timing, the state government’s ‘Yoo-rrook Justice Commission’   is announced. It is astonishing in its substance and style.

A path to gradually – no doubt very gradually – move  to truth telling, reconciliation with Indigenous Victorians and to heal is on offer. Underpinning the idea is the use of what is called restorative justice – like the specialist and successful Koori Court, modelled itself on Maori Courts in NZ.

No government in Australia has dared to allow these questions to be asked – until now we have been too afraid to open those wounds.

But it is not just a commitment to a ‘Royal’ Commission [there it is again … could it not be a Commission of Inquiry? Why do we need the Queen’s imprimatur, but I digress] It is also the unique methodology that Andrews has committed to for the selection and appointment of the commissioners who will do this sensitive job.

Under our Constitution, only the Premier can recommend to the Governor who will be a royal commissioner. Dan Andrews has delegated the selection of the five Yoo-rrook Royal Commissioners to an independent assessment panel. This vetting group will run a public process, seek nominations and check the credentials of those who put their names forward. A short list will be published and the public can comment – favourably or otherwise – about those short listed.

The vetting group of four – two are First Nations leaders, a third a highly qualified Indigenous lawyer who runs the Premier’s Aboriginal affairs policy unit, the fourth a Spanish international lawyer who has worked on truth and healing all over the world – will interview the short-listed candidates and then recommend to the Premier who to appoint as the Royal Commissioners. The chair of the commission and a majority of the five must be Indigenous.

This breaks the fundamental political rule to only start inquiries that find what you ask them to find and recommend what you seek to have recommended. The Premier’s strategy, backed by focus groups and polling, is to press on with reform, to follow the voluntary assisted dying laws, supervised injecting centres, medicinal cannabis, abortion law changes, banning gay conversion ‘therapy’ and a raft of similarly progressive policies. Reconciliation will take time, but that time starts now.

Dan Andrews’ short-term absence resulting from his fractured vertebra has accentuated the dominant role he plays in this administration. As always in politics, senior colleagues keep an eye out for any opportunity for advancement should the Premier retire, move to the private sector or pursue a career change to professional golf. But possible successors are not too animated just now.

His enforced rest will afford him and his family a chance to sample life without the daily stress and hurly-burly of political life and whether he emerges re-invigorated or tempted to leave is anyone’s guess. What is abundantly clear though is that his stamp on this state will continue with the work of Yoo-rrook Commission and other landmark reforms enduring.

.In contrast, the House of Windsor,  self-obsessed and more concerned about their showbiz credentials than the well-being of their ‘subjects’, are on borrowed time. Anyone interested in some truth telling in London? If we are going to tell the truth about what happened a few hundred years ago, we must also tell the truth about our no longer fit-for-purpose constitutional monarchy’

[Jonathan Eric Faine AM (born 21 September 1956) is an Australian former radio presenter who hosted the morning program on ABC Radio Melbourne in Melbourne. Faine is recognised as a prominent and influential member of the Australian Jewish community]…

On the eve of Australia Day [26^th January] the award ceremonies for the annual; Australian of the Year take place. This is a program of the National Australia Day Council, where each year our nation celebrates the achievements and contributions of eminent   Australians throughout the previous year, by profiling leading citizens who are role models for us all.  The Council is a not-for-profit Australian Government owned social enterprise. The award offers an insight into Australian identity, reflecting the nation’s evolving relationship with world, the role of sport in Australian culture, the impact of multiculturalisn, and the special status of Indigenous Australians.. It has also provoked spirited debate about the fields of endeavour that are most worthy of public recognition. Three companion awards have been introduced, recognising both Young and Senior Australians, and proclaiming the efforts of those who work at a grass roots level through the ‘Australia’s Local Hero’ award.

As noted on the ABC website:   “In a year when the nation was tested by devastating bushfires, a global pandemic and economic hardship, Australians rose to these unprecedented challenges with determination and resilience.  Whether it was during a bushfire emergency, at the forefront of a national coronavirus response or from a remote region, the 2021 Australian of the Year Award finalists strove to better the lives of their countrymen and women.  They gave a voice to the survivors of sexual assault, improved the health outcomes for vulnerable and First Nation’s people, broke new ground for people with a disability and brought greater inclusivity to a national sporting body.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced the Australian of the Year Award recipients, all of whom are women, at a ceremony at the National Arboretum in Canberra on Monday evening.

Tonight’s  ‘Australian of the Year Award’ [which proved to be a rather humbling affair rather humbling experience] – she was up against more powerful & nationally known candidates, but the Judges, certainly got it right this year [they normally do, though sometimes equally deserving recipients miss out]  –  A 26-year-old who advocates for survivors of sexual assault has been named 2021 Australian of the Year.  Grace Tame, from Hobart, became the first woman in Tasmania to be granted a legal exemption to speak about her experience as a victim.  She has since become a passionate advocate for education on and prevention of child abuse. .  From age 15, Grace was groomed and raped by her 58-year-old maths teacher, who was found guilty and jailed for his crimes. However, under Tasmania’s sexual-assault victim gag laws, Grace couldn’t legally speak out about her experience – despite the perpetrator and media being free to do so.

Assisted by the #LetHerSpeak campaign, which applied to the Supreme Court on Grace’s behalf, Grace won the right to publicly self-identify as a rape survivor. and won.  She has since used her voice to push for legal reform and raise public awareness about the impacts of sexual violence.  She is also a regular guest speaker for high-profile events and television programs and uses her media profile to advocate for other vulnerable groups in the community.

It’s the first time a Tasmanian has been named Australian of the Year in its 61-year history.

The other nominations for Australian of the Year [and they included three Indigenous women, and a fourth working in Aboriginal health] were as follows. All in their own fields were deserving of recognition of their efforts over the past 12 months, although I feel it would have a shame for the actual winner, if those among the others who roles were essentially part of their paid jobs, had been given the nod ahead of Grace Tame

Northern Territory:  Dr Wendy Page [global expert in Aboriginal Health]

 For more than 30 years, Dr Wendy Page has been dedicated to improving Aboriginal health outcomes, working tirelessly at the grassroots level for the communities in North East Arnhem Land. In 1993, Wendy took up a position at the newly established Miwatj Health Aboriginal Corporation in Nhulunbuy, where she is now medical director.  Wendy has worked to highlight and eliminate a parasitic roundworm prevalent in Aboriginal communities across Northern Australia. She set up the first national workshop for strongyloidiasis, a disease caused by the Strongyloides worm. Wendy’s efforts have been instrumental in reducing the prevalence of strongyloidiasis in local East Arnhem Land communities – from 60 per cent to below 10 per cent. Her many published papers on the Strongyloides worm have made her a world-recognised expert and are used to inform all medical practitioners.  Wendy is passionate about mentoring young doctors. She has taken on roles as a lead supervisor in Nhulunbuy and as an examiner in Darwin to help registrars become qualified GPs.

Australian Capital Territory: Professor Brendan Murphy [Former Chief Medical Officer to the Federal Government and current Secretary of the Dept of Health]

Brendan provided expert advice to the Federal Government to close the international borders before the spread of COVID-19 – a decision which saved tens of thousands of Australian lives. Thanks to his calm leadership, Australia was able to prevent the COVID-19 virus taking hold in the community during the first wave of the global pandemic.  In his role as CMO, Brendan, as Chair of the Australian Health Principal Protection Committee (AHPPC)  provided clear consensus guidance to all Australian Governments around shutting down Australian business and community activities. AHPPC, under his leadership, was responsible for introducing physical distancing measures – and overseeing their implementation in Australia before WHO advice and in advance of other developed countries.  A respected medical expert, Brendan chairs many national committees, and represents Australia at the World Health Assembly.

New South Wales: Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons AFSM [Ex-NSW Fire Commissioner: Leader of Resilience, NSW]

During the terrifying 2019/20 bushfire season, Australians were reassured by the exemplary leadership and empathetic presence of then NSW Fire Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons.

Shane began as a volunteer with NSW RFS in 1985, in the footsteps of his father George – a full-time firefighter who was tragically killed in an out-of-control hazard reduction burn in 2000. In 1994, Shane joined the NSW RFS full-time, working in a range of leadership positions before being endorsed as the organisation’s commissioner in 2007 – a role he held for 12 years. In 2019/20, Shane guided a state-wide response including a 74,000-strong crew of mostly volunteers through one of Australia’s worst fire seasons. Working long hours, he informed and calmed the public in daily press conferences, liaised with government leaders and provided comfort to colleagues and family members of firefighters who lost their lives in service to others.  In April 2020, Shane was appointed leader of the new disaster management and recovery agency, Resilience NSW.

Queensland: Dr Dinesh Palipana OAM  [Advocate for Doctors with Disabilities]

Dr Dinesh Palipana OAM is a senior resident doctor at Gold Coast University Hospital. Despite facing numerous barriers, he became the first quadriplegic medical graduate and medical intern in Queensland. He was recently admitted as a lawyer.  As co-founder of Doctors With Disabilities Australia, Dinesh has worked with the Australian Medical Association to create first-of-kind national policies for inclusivity in medical education and employment. Dinesh is a doctor for the Gold Coast Titans physical disability rugby league team. He is also a member of multiple committees for disability advocacy and has spoken in world-renowned forums such as TEDx. Through COVID-19, he advocated for equitable treatment for people with disabilities, including as a witness to the Disability Royal Commission. Dinesh has also contributed significantly to scientific advances in treating spinal cord injury and restoring function to people with paralysis. His national and global impact has been recognised with numerous awards, including Junior Doctor of the Year and the Order of Australia.

Wester Australia:  Professor Helen Milroy [Australia’s First Indigenous Doctor]

Prof Helen Milroy was Australia’s first Indigenous doctor and is now a highly regarded expert in child and adolescent psychiatry.For more than 25 years, Helen has been a pioneer in research, education and training in Aboriginal and child mental health, and recovery from grief and trauma. She has supported the Aboriginal and medical workforce in applying Indigenous knowledge and cultural models of care.

Helen has played a key role on numerous mental health advisory committees and boards,  including the National Mental Health Commission.  She was appointed as commissioner for the Australian Government’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse from 2013-2017. Helen was also the first Indigenous commissioner to the Australian Football League.

A talented artist and published author, Helen’s books have been shortlisted for several major awards. In 2018, she received the Australian Indigenous Doctor of the Year Award, recognising her many achievements.

South Australia:  Tanya Hosch [Leader; Changemaker and Visionary]

Tanya Hosch is the first Indigenous person and second woman appointed to the AFL executive. She has held leadership roles in sport, the arts, culture, social justice and public policy.  One of the pre-eminent Indigenous leaders pursuing constitutional recognition of Australia’s First Nations people, Tanya’s principled leadership is transforming the AFL – advancing women, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, gender-diverse Australians and the entire community.

Tanya championed the first Indigenous player statue of Nicky Winmar and instigated a review of anti-vilification policy within the code. She helped secure an apology for Adam Goodes from the AFL and delivered a new industry framework to help prevent racist treatment of players.  Tanya also helped found advocacy organisation The Indigenous Players Alliance. She drove a new respect and responsibility policy enabling women to seek redress for unacceptable behaviour, and a world-first gender diversity policy for a contact sport. In 2020, she drove a hugely successful social media campaign aimed at informing and protecting Indigenous communities from COVID-19.

Victoria:  Donna Stolzenberg  [Founder and CEO, the National Homeless Collective].

Proud Indigenous woman Donna Stolzenberg is a CEO, keynote speaker and trainer. In 2014, she had the simple idea of handing out 50 donated sleeping bags to homeless people. That idea has evolved into a nationwide charity.

The National Homeless Collective (NHC) is a grassroots Australian organisation that helps people affected by homelessness, domestic violence and social disadvantage.

A mother of five boys and a grandmother of two, Donna has lived experience of overcoming homelessness and hardship. Under Donna’s direction, NHC has created six sub-charities targeting different issues – Period Project, School Project, Plate Up Project, Sleeping Bags for Homelessness, and Secret Women’s Business. It also runs Kala Space, an op shop employing women affected by domestic abuse or homelessness.

Donna’s generosity and resourcefulness have provided practical solutions in Australia’s most recent crises. This includes helping women to safely escape homelessness, people affected by bushfires, or those locked down in the Melbourne towers during COVID-19.

The other three awards from the night were decided as follows.

Senior Australian of the Year

Northern Territory:  Dr. Miriam-Rose Ungunmerr Baumann AM

The Northern Territory’s [and Australia’s] Senior Australian of 2021 Dr. Miriam-Rose Ungunmerr Baumann AM  has been recognised for her work as an Aboriginal activist, educator and artist.  In 1975, she became the NT’s first fully qualified Aboriginal teacher.  She went on to become a principal in her community of Nauiyu, 143 kilometres south-west of Darwin.  “Training our local people to be educators in our communities is important, because they know best,” she said.  “They know the families and the children.

“We can do the western education and we can also teach our way of educating our kids in a cultural sense, and our languages, dances, ceremonies, you name it.  “It makes us a better person in being able to do that.”

Dr Ungunmerr-Baumann, 69, is also a renowned writer and public speaker.  She has served on the National Indigenous Council and founded the Miriam Rose Foundation to drive reconciliation at a grassroots level.  It’s the third time Dr Ungunmerr-Baumann has been nominated for an Australian of the Year award, but she was still nervous at the announcement.  “I was saying, ‘Please God, not me’. And then my name was announced, I nearly fell off the chair in shock,” she said.  “If I am Senior Australian of the Year, what am I supposed to be doing? Will I be traveling around Australia? I’m just about in my wheelchair! How am I going to manage?”

Young Australian of the Year

South Australia:  Isobel Marshall  The 2021 Young Australian of the Year is 22-year-old social entrepreneur Isobel Marshall of Adelaide, South Australia.  At just 18 years of age, Isobel co-founded TABOO with school friend Eloise Hall, to help women around the world by breaking down the stigma around menstruation and providing greater access to hygiene products.  Isobel and business partner Eloise crowdfunded $56,000 to launch their range of products in August 2019.  TABOO sells ethically sourced organic cotton pads and tampons to the Australian market.

One hundred per cent of net profits goes to One Girls, a charity which provides education programs for girls and women in Sierra Leone and Uganda.

In Australia, TABOO partners with Vinnies Women’s Crisis centre, providing free access to pads and tampons for women who require emergency accommodation in South Australia.

On country, TABOO also supports the Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Women’s Council, which is based in Alice Springs.

Local Australian Hero

New South Wales:  Rosemary Kariuki

The 2021 Australia’s Local Hero is 60-year-old advocate for migrant and refugee women, Rosemary Kariuki of Oran Park, NSW.  Rosemary is the multicultural community liaison officer for the Parramatta Police.  She specialises in helping migrants who are facing domestic violence, language barriers and financial distress.  Her experience of fleeing Kenya alone in 1999 to escape family abuse and tribal clashes – and her initial loneliness upon arriving in Australia – helped Rosemary recognise that isolation is a huge issue for many migrant women.  In partnership with the African Women’s Group, she helped start the African Women’s Dinner Dance to help migrant women meet others like themselves and form social networks.  Now in its 14th year, more than 400 women attend the annual event.

She also started the African Village Market, a program to help migrants and refugees start their own businesses, which ran for four years.

After the Awards, the Chair of the National Australia Day Council, Danielle Roche OAM, congratulated the 2021 Australian of the Year Award recipients.

“Grace, Miriam-Rose, Isobel and Rosemary are all committed to changing attitudes in our society and changing lives,” she said.

“They are strong, determined women who are dedicated to breaking down barriers and advocating for people’s rights – particularly the rights of women and children.

“They epitomise the Australian values of respect, tolerance, equality of opportunity and compassion.

“Because of them, others get a fair go.

It was reported in this week’s edition of the Weekly Times [a rural newspaper in Victoria] under the headline “It’s Hop, Skip and Rump” that Victorian kangaroo meat is set to be tossed on to barbeques in the New Year as the Andrews Government approves the Aussie icon being processed for human consumption.  I assume that the kangaroo meat that can presently be purchased in Victoria comes from those states which already have such an approval.

Now I imagine this could be a very emotive subject for many people, despite the fact that most people already happily eat, without any thought for the animals involved, the meat from livestock such as cows, sheep, pigs, fowls, ducks, geese, and so on. I assume that the  reason for the emotion [apart from the non- meat eaters and in the main, their general distaste to kill any animal for food], is most likely based on the fact that the kangaroo is a ‘national icon’, and that makes presumably that form of meat all the difference!!

Not that the ‘culling’ of kangaroos for food is new! Already in 2020, more than 40,000 Victorian kangaroos have been harvested by professional shooters and processed into ‘pet food’!! [As of the 1st December, the actual number was 39,484 During this COVID year, pet food processors claim that there has already been a big lift in demand for roo and deer meat in the face of beef shortages. Those organisations will insist that ‘Kangaroo meat is the way of the future’.

Surveys of the Victorian kangaroo population are conducted regularly, the most recent in November. The report noted that ‘Harvesting is tightly controlled by Victoria’s Game Management Authority, which issues tags that professional shooters must attach to each kangaroo carcass’.

I guess the writer is standing on the fence a little here –  I generally dislike the idea of raising animals for the purpose of killing them for a human food source, yet I do eat some meat. Animal husbandry has been a part of ‘man’s’ existence since the beginning of time. We regularly read reports of kangaroo populations getting out of control in Australia, and the problems this causes for our farming communities, especially in times of drought; similarly, with the build-up of urban areas around the cities and towns, the subsequent encroachment  into the animals’ environment, and their ‘forced’ movement into urban areas in search of food, causes numerous other problems of conflict.

So it would seem, that despite the protests and concerns, of some aspects of society, the processing of kangaroo meat in Victoria for human consumption in inevitable. The Editorial that follows outlines the environmental advantages –  it could have also made reference to the advantages gained through the regulation and control of animal numbers and over-population  –  arguments for some form of culling have being used to justify the practice, not just with kangaroos, but other wild species such as deer, brumbies & wild horses, feral pigs and buffalo, etc. Personally, I’d like to see more attention given to the culling of wild dogs and feral [and domestic] cats of the sort which devastate much of our Australian wildlife.

In any case, we read from the Weekly Times editorial,  of the 30^th December 2020 [and this is admittedly, essentially a  not unexpected rural view]

“What better way to celebrate being Australian than throwing a strip of kangaroo loin, fillet or rump on the barbeque.

It is one of the healthiest, leanest and arguably most sustainable meats in the world..

NSW, Queensland,  and South Australia have been regulating the harvest and processing of the Aussie icon for decades.

So why has it taken the Victorian government so long to approve the processing of kangaroo  for consumption?

The Weekly Times readership need look no further than the lobbying of animal welfare and environmental groups, who have urged Victorian Labor MPS to ban kangaroo culling and processing.

Animal Justice Party MP Andy Meddick wants to ‘rapidly phase out the commercial killing of kangaroo and wallabies and close down processing industries’ with more funding to encourage ‘kangaroo friendly   wildlife-based tourism’.

The Greens have also called  for the ‘banning of the commercial killing of kangaroos’.

Yet such policies fail to recognise  kangaroos are the most efficient source of meat found in  Australia.

While people such as Mr. Meddick want to ‘save’ every animal, surely the Greens realise the environmental value of a species that has such a low carbon footprint.

They need to accept roos are an ideal source of high-quality protein, which when properly managed, can supplement the supply of agricultural meats.

While it has taken a while, Premier Daniel Andrews and his team should be congratulated on standing up to Meddick and the Greens.

The next step is to tap into another rich source of protein in the forests – wild deer”………………………………………….

One final word on a subject that does leave the writer with no difference or conflict of opinion   – a letter to the editor in the same publication, whose thoughts I thoroughly support.

“Victoria’s native wildlife is in decline due to many mounting pressures, including climate change, bush-fires, drought and habitat loss. It is unconscionable to add to this decline by continuing the barbaric sport of killing waterbirds for pleasure.  It is 2021, not 1821. It is time the Victorian Government banned duck shooting to bring our state up to date with social expectations”.

[rather than allow a small minority of powerful interests to continue to run the agenda on this question].

Indigenous burn-offs are helping make Australia more fire-safe.

Writing in the Victorian ‘Weekly Times’ newspaper of 16 December, 2020, journalist Brett Ellis wrote that ‘Indigenous fire management will improve the health and safety of the land’.

This is a topic that has been referred on in various forums over recent years. In the same edition of the ‘Weekly Times’. Peter Hunt reported that “Landcare groups and the Victorian Opposition are embracing Aboriginal cultural burning as a means of reviving bushland and curbing fuel loads on private and public land………………a key part [of cultural burning] is making sure there’s enough moisture in the soil to keep the fire cool, so it just burns the leaf litter and grass thatch. The flame is no more than 30cm high. These burns will knock out the smaller shrubs and push them back into the gullies, where they belong. Lack of fire means they keep spreading ……ultimately…cultural burns boosted grass growth, while protecting the tree canopy…………The devastating impact of last summer’s bushfire highlighted the need to better manage our landscape and undertake more targeted fuel reduction burns,,”

In view of that type of comment, I believe it’s worthwhile to take note of the views of people like Brett Ellis, who himself is a fire & emergency management consultant and director at Firestick Alliance Indigenous Corporation. Admittedly, he is really only using one principal example to demonstrate his arguments, and to my reading, leaves the question a little ‘up in the air’, and he is certainly speaking from an Indigenous viewpoint – though in recent years, his voice has not been a sole call from that area. Bruce Pascoe’s book ‘Dark Emu’ [which I have previously covered in this column] – a book much maligned in some quarters  –  devotes a chapter to the use of ‘fire’ and it’s use by Indigenous communities. He makes the point, noted by Ellis below that “within years of Aboriginal people being prevented from operating their traditional fire regimes, the countryside was overwhelmed by understorey species” [p. 164].

So, from the article by Brett Ellis,  we read the following considerations about the topic..

“Australian scientific earth core sampling suggests that the mega fire ceased  about 8,000 years ago signifying that fire lore, customs and practices had established a balance  between man, flora and fauna.

Using the ‘right fire’, Aborigines maintained the balance of country and as such enabled themselves  and all living things to survive and thrive.

More than 200 years ago that balance was interrupted. Aboriginal fire lore was broken, fire practices were ceased and the landscape changed due to vegetation clearance and uncontrolled hot bushfires.

Unfortunately, Aboriginal fire lore is still being broken. Our country is sick.. Current land and fire management practices are compounding this issue with increasing larger and more frequent devastating and costly mega fires the future for Australia.

Western fire and land management practices are continuing to destroy  the sacred canopy and dry out the environment. With climate change, the need for healthy canopy and under-storey will be essential to assist the environment to remain cool and resilient with increasing temperatures.

Aboriginals have dealt with climate change before and ensuring fire lore and practices are reinstated will provide the needed protection and management to allow the environment to be prepared and protected.

Unfortunately, much of the ancient knowledge of fire methodologies, lore and practices have been lost, especially in southeast Australia.

We are still fortunate that pockets of intact knowledge remain in other parts of the continent from which to rebuild important knowledge.

Having worked in strategic fire and emergency management roles at local and state government levels, I have been challenged in the past trying to balance the competing views of burning and protection of the bush. I now know Indigenous fire knowledge and methodology is the key to balancing that tension and improving the health and safety of our landscapes.

Over the past five years I have had the good fortune of working with Aboriginal elders and knowledge holders who have spent many days at our property as part of an Indigenous fire and land management trial site. The Yarra Valley property was severely affected by Black Saturday bushfires and has a 40/40 split of pasture and recovering native vegetation.

Under the guidance of one of Australia’s best known leading Indigenous fire practitioners, Victor Stefferson, and alongside Wurundjeri elder Uncle David Wandin, we have applied the right fire on the right country at the right time. And the landscape is showing the benefits.

The addition of Indigenous fire into the system is producing an increased presence of native vegetation, stronger presence of kangaroo grass, wallaby grass and many native herbs, foods, medicines and orchids. This has been seen in the paddocks as well as under the tree canopy as strengthened native plants outcompete introduced grasses. Every area where we have applied the right fire, we have seen improvement in diversity of vegetation and wildlife.  The locations are staying greener, healthier and stronger through summer”.

Over the past few weeks, the writer has been deep into a couple of more serious books, including a written version of a television series about the history of Ireland – ‘Story of Ireland: In search of a new national memory’ by Neil Hegarty.  Needing a bit of a break from the likes of that, I chose a couple of recently released novels by two Australian authors – Craig Silvey, and Jane Harper – both novels are briefly commented upon with the aid of a couple of professional reviews written after publication.

We begin with   ‘Honeybee’ by Craig Silvey: published 2020; 424 pages  –  a very emotional and eye-opening novel about, what for me, was generally, the more seedy sides of life [at least, on the surface anyway]  –  the book’s message  ‘Find out who you are, and live that life’.

In many ways, a ‘heart-breaking story taking myself as the reader, into a world I was not familiar or particularly comfortable with – of family violence; extortion plots, botched bank robberies, drag shows, and so on. There are also stories of redemption, perseverance, mercy and hope in this scenario – of two lives changed forever by a chance encounter, and of the friendship offered from unexpected sources along the way  –  as one reviewer put it  –   “At the heart of Honeybee is Sam: a solitary, resilient young person battling to navigate the world as their true self; ensnared by loyalty to a troubled mother, scarred by the volatility of a domineering stepfather, and confounded by the kindness of new alliances”.

From the book cover and subsequent comments.

Late in the night, fourteen-year-old Sam Watson steps onto a quiet overpass, climbs over the rail and looks down at the road far below. At the other end of the same bridge, an old man, Vic, smokes his last cigarette.  The two see each other across the void. A fateful connection is made, and an unlikely friendship blooms. Slowly, we learn what led Sam and Vic to the bridge that night. Bonded by their suffering, each privately commits to the impossible task of saving the other.

Guardian Australia writes:

Sam Watson, the narrator and protagonist of Silvey’s much-anticipated new novel, Honeybee, is another such adolescent. The reader is first introduced to Sam on the railing of an overpass, where, filled with despair and unendurable hurt, Sam has come to die.

It’s a dramatic beginning, and much of the first act of the novel is structured around unfolding the actions and history that have brought Sam to this point. Sam’s particular context, that is, is treated as something of a mystery, the discovery of which is the main narrative impetus of the first part of the book.

[As the Guardian writes] :There’s no way to write about this without a spoiler. Reader, you have been warned.

Honeybee’s opening mystery, the reason why Sam is different from Silvey’s other characters – and the reason why Sam’s particularly gentle nature is a problem in her family and life (and, arguably, in the novel) – is the fact that Sam is transgender. Sam is 14 years old, at the point where the body she was born in is beginning to develop the adult characteristics that are so different from those that match her gender; at the point, that is, that dysphoria so often becomes intolerable for trans people. For Sam, too, this is also the point where her family’s desire for her to act “like a man” has intensified, and she can see no way out of her discomfort and her shame.

None of this is inaccurate, as far as portrayals go – and it’s clear, especially from the book’s acknowledgements, that Silvey has done a great deal of research in writing Honeybee, and spoken to many people with lived experience of gender dysphoria and transition. Even still, there’s something about the way that Sam’s gender identity is treated as a reveal, as something startling or surprising, that sits uncomfortably with me. It feels othering, or almost exploitative, even as Sam is always portrayed with great compassion.

I’m not trans. I am queer – which means that transfolk are a part of my community – and the woman who I love just happens to be transgender, too. She’s an activist, and a mentor to young transfolk, and one of the reasons why she does such things is because, as a child and adolescent, she was never able to tell her own story, and because, as an adult, so many of the stories that exist about people like her centre on their pain and trauma and their struggle – and this is, she sometimes says, exhausting.

There’s a whole article that could be written about the rights and responsibilities of representation, the importance of “own voices” telling their own stories. There are smarter and better-placed people to do that. But even after Sam’s gender identity was revealed in Honeybee, I kept thinking there’s so much else to her, and to the novel, that her transness sometimes feels like just one more trauma without which the book would have worked equally well.

Sam’s life is difficult and it is traumatic – she is the only child of a mother who fell pregnant when she was still a child herself, and who has raised Sam without support, dealing with her frustration and sadness by turning to alcohol and then to much harder drugs. Sam has grown up in a series of dilapidated flats, often leaving suddenly when the rental arrears grow too high, and being continually bullied at school for her differences.

Most recently, Sam’s stepfather has joined in on this terrorising, because Sam’s sensitivity is anathematic to the rough and violent kind of masculinity by which he lives his life – and which manifests frequently in his treatment of Sam’s mother. Sam’s stepfather is also a con artist who ends up working as a debt collector and enforcer for a dangerous drug dealer, and storing fentanyl and guns in the family home. There’s a lot going on for Sam already, a lot of reasons why she might feel damaged and “wrong” (the term she uses often across the book) – plenty that could have brought her to that overpass, even before her gender is added to the mix.

At its core, though, Honeybeeis a novel about unconventional kinds of love: standing on that overpass, Sam meets an old man, Vic, who has come to the same place with the same intention, but for each of them, the presence of the other person makes this act suddenly impossible.

Thrown together by these extreme circumstances, Sam and Vic become friends, and then a kind of family. Sam moves into Vic’s house, living in the bedroom that he used to share with his late wife, and the pair learn to support, accept and enliven each other. Here, Sam also befriends one of Vic’s neighbours, the ballsy and vivacious Aggie, a teenage girl who is so fully herself that Sam can’t help but be drawn in.

What Sam finds in Honeybeeis a different kind of family, and a different kind of love – one that is based on choice, rather than just on chance – and it is with this support and encouragement that she is also able to start to find herself. This is a book as much about these kinds of relationships as it is about self-discovery, self-acceptance and coming-of-age, themes that are common in Silvey’s work, and that he always handles with tenderness and compassion. Honeybee is no exception – but it’s still difficult to reconcile this with the discomfort that is caused by Silvey treating Sam’s gender as a dramatic reveal, or as just one other trauma in her already-difficult life.

[Craig Silvey is an author and screenwriter from Fremantle, Western Australia.  His critically acclaimed debut novel, Rhubarb, was published in 2004. His bestselling second novel, Jasper Jones, was released in 2009 and is considered a modern Australian classic. Published in over a dozen territories, Jasper Jones has won plaudits in three continents, including an International Dublin Literary Award shortlisting, a Michael J. Printz Award Honor, and a Miles Franklin Literary Award shortlisting. Jasper Jones was the Australian Book Industry Awards Book of the Year for 2010.  Honeybee is his third novel].

Our second novel is  ‘The Survivors’ by Jane Harper [published 2020; 378 pages]  –  a relatively quick read, as good as ‘The Dry’ ]her previous novel I’d read], although I felt the story could have continued a little further –  it left a few outcomes either assumed, to be guessed at, or just neglected in the writing [I doubt the latter, obviously intended as it was]  –  I guess my problem is, that I like a clean ending, but it was an intriguing little mystery, the solution to which kept you reading. I’m currently ‘ploughing’ through a history of Ireland, so this was a bit of welcome piece of light reading for a couple of days!!!  Among many other aspects of the story, there is the tragic but realistic portrayal of a dementia sufferer, a little close to home these days!!

From the jacket cover:

Jane Harper’s highly anticipated fourth novel The Survivors has been released in Australia and New Zealand. ‘The Survivors’, a standalone mystery, is set on the Tasmanian coast. Released in Australia on September 22, The Survivors went straight to No.1 on the Australian bestseller list (Nielsen BookScan) after a massive debut week.

Kieran Elliott’s life changed forever on a single day when a reckless mistake led to devastating consequences. The guilt that still haunts him resurfaces during a visit with his young family to the small coastal community he once called home.  Kieran’s parents are struggling in a town where fortunes are forged by the sea. Between them all is his absent brother, Finn.  When a body is discovered on the beach, long-held secrets threaten to emerge. A sunken wreck, a missing girl, and questions that have never washed away…

“I’ve really enjoyed writing this one,” Jane said. “It’s been a lot of fun researching and writing about such a fantastic part of the country.”

And from the introductory paragraphs of the review in the Sydney Morning Herald [by Sue Turnbull, on the 22^nd September 2020]  we read:

This time we’re in one of those deserted-for-most-of-the-year beach communities in Tasmania with one main road and a restaurant called The Surf and Turf. Just in case you might miss it, there’s a giant crayfish fashioned out of sun-bleached shells glued to the wall, and a sign saying “In here for fish from there” with an “uneven arrow” pointing to the ocean.

Once again, as in all her crime novels beginning with The Dry, Australian crime writer Jane Harper creates an impressive landscape that serves to illustrate how the experience of place inevitably shapes the lives of those who live there. While Evelyn Bay might once have depended on fishing and forestry, it now limps along supported by seasonal whale-watching and deep-sea diving tours to investigate the innumerable wrecks offshore.

Evelyn Bay is the kind of small town most young people can’t wait to leave as soon as they can. Like Kieran, who now lives in Sydney but has returned home with his partner Mia and baby Audrey to help his mother pack up the family home. His father has disappeared into the “void” of early onset dementia, and his mother is only just coping with his increasingly erratic behaviour

Coming home was never going to be easy. But Kieran is also lugging a swag of grief for a tragedy 12 years earlier during a fatal storm that resulted in the death of two young men at sea. One of them was Kieran’s elder brother, Finn, the other a young father whose still-furious son now works at The Surf and Turf. This was also the night when a young women, Gabby Birch, went missing, and the mystery of her disappearance has never been solved.

Harper establishes the situation fast. Kieran’s only been home one night when another young woman, Bronte, who again works at The Surf and Turf, is found dead on the beach at the end of her shift. But then the pace slows, as Harper lets the ripples of effect wash over all the survivors of that storm in the past as they circle each other in a reunion that is now overshadowed by a death in the present.

While the police conduct their investigation in the background, the focus is always on Kieran as he comes to realise that he has been so consumed by his own guilt and grief, that he has missed the bigger picture. Like all small towns, Evelyn Bay has more than its share of intrigue now rehearsed on its social media network.

Harper deftly unravels these small-town secrets, where it’s the little things that matter. Kieran’s old friend and rival, Ash, now runs a landscaping business and is devastated by the destruction of his grandmother’s carefully tended garden by a recent blow-in, the thriller writer G.R. Barlin. This character gives Harper some playful opportunities to comment on the experience of being a writer.

Barlin writes the kinds of books that people buy at airports, stay “glued to” at the pool and then leave in their hotel room “to save on luggage weight”. Far from being dismayed by this, Barlin appears unruffled given he has made a great deal of money at his craft and approaches it in a workmanlike way. As he tells Kieran, “Writers’ block is for amateurs … I do this for a living.”

He is, however, the perceptive outsider who knows that for a community such as Evelyn Bay to survive, the people need to be “close-knit” and that “once that trust is broken, they’re stuffed”. It’s not just the loss of the traditional industries that threatens small communities, but the tensions that pull people apart.

As always in her books, Harper embraces the mythic. Visible from the whale lookout are three iron statues facing the sea, a memorial commissioned as a tribute to the 54 passengers and crew who lost their lives in a shipwreck nearly a century ago. Known as The Survivors, they are never totally submerged. For Kieran, his family, and Evelyn Bay, it is all about survival.

Despite the obvious symbolism, The Survivors is a subtle, quiet book about guilt, grief and growing up. You may find it hard to leave it behind.

[And thankfully, for my readers, this review didn’t reveal the story’s outcome  – it’s not hard to read, and you are constantly wondering, despite little clues along the way, just who has been responsible for the two murders, a decade apart, and seemingly unconnected!!  Enjoy!!]

[Jane Harper is the author of international bestsellers ‘The Dry’, ‘Force of Nature’, and ‘The Last Man’.   Her books are published in 40 territories worldwide.  Jane has won numerous top awards including the CWA Gold Dagger Award for Best Crime Novel, the British Book Awards Crime and Thriller Book of the Year, the Australian Book Industry Awards Book of the Year and the Australian Indie Awards Book of the Year]. 

In our current Melbourne [Victorian] lockdown of the past six months or so, the Coachbuilder has managed a degree of reading, and I would like to refer to three recently read books, and the in particular, the author of one of them. The books range from Australian history, one fictional, one real history, to a light novel, while the author we look at is Australia’s  Geoffrey Blainey.

[1] Recently,  I finished reading [out in my sunny backyard]     ‘A Room Made of Leaves’ by Kate Grenville, published in  2020, 322 pages.  A wonderful little mix of fact and fantasy/fiction about Elizabeth Macarthur, wife of the ‘so-called’ Father of the Australian sheep industry.

Who was John Macarthur?  Wikipedia describes him thus –  John Macarthur (1767 – 10 April 1834] was a British Army Officer, entrepreneur, politician, architect and pioneer of settlement in Australia. Macarthur is recognised as the pioneer of the wool  industry that was to boom in Australia in the early 19th century and become a trademark of the nation. He is noted as the architect of  Farm House, his own residence in Parramatta  and as the man who commissioned architect John Verge  to design Camden Park Estate  in Camden, in New South Wales. He was instrumental in agitating for, and organising, a rebellion against the colonial government in what is often described as the Rum Bebellion, 

But was he deserving of the generally historical, and in the main, favourable picture the books have of him?

“What if Elizabeth Macarthur-wife of the notorious John Macarthur, wool baron in the earliest days of Sydney-had written a shockingly frank secret memoir? And what if novelist Kate Grenville had miraculously found and published it? That’s the starting point for A Room Made of Leaves, a playful dance of possibilities between the real and the invented.  Marriage to a ruthless bully, the impulses of her heart, the search for power in a society that gave women none- ‘this’ Elizabeth Macarthur manages her complicated life with spirit and passion, cunning and sly wit. Her memoir lets us hear-at last!-what one of those seemingly demure women from history might really have thought.  At the centre of A Room Made of Leaves is one of the most toxic issues of our own age- the seductive appeal of false stories. This book may be set in the past, but it’s just as much about the present, where secrets and lies have the dangerous power to shape reality.  Kate Grenville’s return to the territory of The Secret River is historical fiction turned inside out, a stunning sleight of hand by one of our most original writers.”

Let’s hear from the author herself

The idea for A Room Made of Leaves was sparked nearly twenty years ago, when I was doing research for The Secret River, a book set in the earliest years of the British colony in Australia. I came across some of the letters of Elizabeth Macarthur, wife of John Macarthur, a junior officer who arrived with his family in Sydney in 1790.

Australian history, like most histories, is a bit light-on when it comes to women, because they left so little behind.  Even when they were educated enough to write letters or journals, those writings are bland, sedate things, suitable to be shared in any genteel parlour.  Women at that time had no choice but to be bland.  Without any power over any aspect of their lives, they were obliged to go along with a social and legal system that equated them with children.  They might have talked together about what they felt about that destiny, but none of them could risk putting it in writing.

Elizabeth Macarthur’s letters are no different.  She and John and their infant son landed in a new, raw, violent, hungry penal colony – a thousand convicts and a couple of hundred guards – six months’ sail from home.  Yet from her letters – unrevealing, cheery, impersonal – you’d never know any of that.

More interesting to me was what she wrote – or didn’t write – about her husband.  The son of a draper, John Macarthur had no prospects other than what he could make for himself, and in Sydney he lost no time in squeezing every drop of advantage out of the place and his position there.  His letters – far from bland and sedate – show him to have been a clever, ruthless bully, a dangerous man to cross, violent and unforgiving towards anyone who tried to go against him.

Yet from Elizabeth’s letters there’s not the faintest shadow of any of that.  Reading her letters, you’d think he was a kindly, cheerful, reasonable man beloved of all around him.  Either he was a completely different man at home, or her letters are beautiful lies.

Enter William Dawes, another junior officer in the Sydney of 1790.  Dawes emerges from the record as a very likeable man: warm, selfless, with great integrity. He was the colony’s resident astronomer and Elizabeth Macarthur asked him for lessons in “a few easy stars”.  However, stars turned out not to be as easy as she thought and, she says, “I mistook my abilities, and I blush at my error.”

I blush at my error! In the context of her otherwise bloodless letters, those five words blaze off the page with an unmistakable erotic charge.  Suddenly – for the only time in all the many pages she wrote – she’s a flesh-and-blood woman. What might have happened after Mrs Macarthur blushed?

Those five words are where this book started.  What they told me was that she wasn’t as bland and boring as her letters might suggest.  She lived – or at least wrote – behind a mask, and just for that one instant, the mask slipped.

A body of myth has grown around Elizabeth and John Macarthur.  Generations of schoolchildren have learned that John Macarthur more or less singlehandedly bred the Australian Merino sheep that until recently was the basis of our economy. All over Australia, streets and schools are named in his honour.  The myth about Elizabeth is that, when John was away in England for two long  periods, she kept the family sheep empire going, a loving, industrious, pious helpmeet to her husband.

The slipping of the mask gave me a way to sneak in behind the myth and explore something more interesting, and possibly more true.  The way I put it to myself was that Elizabeth Macarthur had written the fictional account of her life, in those bland letters.  I was going to write the non-fictional account, the truth that she couldn’t ever risk putting on paper.  It would take the form of her secret memoirs, hidden in a tin box tucked away in the roof of her house. I’d pretend that I’d found these memoirs, and that I was simply transcribing and publishing them.  The joke-within-a-joke would be that the story would be based on the real documentary record, and would even include quotes from Elizabeth Macarthur’s real letters.  Fact and fiction would overlap and allow a fictional woman of the past to do what would have been impossible for any real woman of that time: to put down in writing what she really thought.

It was an exciting project to try to give Elizabeth Macarthur the voice she could never have had.  She was a remarkable woman, to have managed the gigantic enterprise of the family business at a time when women were expected to be helpless and ignorant and stay at home with the children. She was on her own – for four years during her husband’s first absence, nine years the second – in a brutal society, yet she came to thrive. By the time Macarthur came back from that second absence, he was overwhelmed by mental illness, but the business his wife had managed so well was the richest in the colony.

But as I wrote, I realised that this was more than a book about an extraordinary woman.  It was about the dangerous power of false stories, false surfaces, myths, and the way they can erase the truth.  Women were not the only people whose voices were silenced.  In the Australian context, the other great silencing concerns the story of the Aboriginal people.  The accounts left by those early settlers are the only written accounts of that history, but as Elizabeth Macarthur warns us, Do not believe too quickly!

I travelled to Devon to research Elizabeth’s childhood, and spent many hours at Elizabeth Farm and other locations around Parramatta.  I drew on as many primary sources as I could find: the parish records of Bridgerule in Devon, archives in the State Library of NSW, Governors’ correspondence, and contemporary accounts of early Sydney.  A Room Made of Leaves had found its form and content by the time Michelle Scott Tucker’s biography of Elizabeth Macarthur was published, and I didn’t draw on that book in writing my own, but Michelle was helpful in advising me how to contact Macarthur descendants to let them know of the book (which I did as a courtesy to them). My reading of the primary sources has sometimes led me in a different direction from other writers about Elizabeth Macarthur.  But what I think we all share is admiration for that remarkable woman.

This book isn’t history. It’s fiction. But, like most historical fiction, it starts in the same place history does: in the record of the past left to us in documents, oral traditions, buildings, landscapes and objects.   Historians devise one kind of story from those sources.  Fiction writers devise another kind. Those sources are flawed, partial and ambiguous.  For that reason, the stories that come out of them, although starting in the same place, can end up very differently.  But what historians and writers of historical fiction have in common is an urge to understand that past: what it meant then, and perhaps more importantly, what it means now: for us, living in the world that’s been shaped by that past.

[2]  ‘Mines in the Spinifex: The Story of Mount Isa Mines’ by Geoffrey Blainey, published in 1960, 278 pages,  a very interesting read, and depiction of the various mistakes and miscalculations made in Mt Isa getting to where it is today [or at least in 1960, when the book was written].  In it, Geoffrey Blainey shows his lifelong skill as a writer of history.  As one reviewer wrote at the time of the book’s publication – ‘Amazing book. Blainey is such a great author! He combines dense information with literary poetics, making his histories fun and readable’..

Commentary on the book some years after it’s publication, it was noted that the development of Mt. Isa was formidable, akin in many ways to the mining of Grasberg…remote, extreme temperatures, extreme transport required, and a huge deposit. Since the book was written in the ’60s it leaves a lot of what is now long past history out. But it is interesting to note that Xstata owns it now, and is now actively mining what in the book were deposits of lower grade to be saved for the future. Most amazing about Isa are the decades that it took to become profitable and the type of men who despite all the odds keep believing in it and moving it forward, until it could become a mine with greater riches than Broken Hill. If only more money had been available to develop it early on, what a different story we would have, and perhaps another mining giant company born of it. (

Another reviewer described it as a thoroughly enjoyable and informative documentary of not only Mount Isa Mines, but also prospecting and mining in general in northern Australia (mainly in Queensland). Also a good historical account of associated business ,politics and unions from the ‘struggle years’, during which individual miners and small mining operations struggled to scrape together a meagre existence, up to the more prosperous years, following the discovery of more productive ore-bearing lodes and the transition to large scale operations. Highly recommended for those who love Australian history and are proud of our heritage, including the spirit and achievements of our pioneers.

I also recently read  ‘Me & Emma by Elizabeth Flock, published in  2004, 280 pages  –  a bit of light reading in the midst of two somewhat heavier books I am was making my way through at the time. An intriguing story, set I believe in the backblocks of ‘poor’ America, and written through the eyes and words of an 8 year old girl, who feels the responsibility of protecting her 6 year old sister, Emma [who often seems much older than the story teller] and even trying to protect her indifferent mother, from the brutal attentions of their stepfather.  A story which has you wondering at the outcome, while all along, having a fairly good idea as to how it will end  – only to be way off course, with an unexpected twist, despite various vague clues along the way. I’ll say no more on that score, don’t want to spoil the storyline for potential readers.  A nice little read, albeit somewhat disturbing in view of the nature of the abuse by the stepfather, and the seeming disinterest of the mother to the welfare of her girls, or even of herself!

Here are three short reviews, which creates even more intrigue for the potential reader.;

[Goodreads]: The title characters in Me & Emma are very nearly photographic opposites–8-year-old Carrie, the raven-haired narrator, is timid and introverted, while her little sister Emma is a tow-headed powerhouse with no sense of fear. The girls live in a terrible situation: they depend on an unstable mother that has never recovered from her husband’s murder, their stepfather beats them regularly, and they must forage on their own for food.

Stop here and you have a story told many times before, as fiction and nonfiction in tales like Ellen Foster, or I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings –stories in which a young girl reveals the horrors of her childhood. Me & Emma differentiates itself with a spectacular finish, shocking the reader and turning the entire story on its head. Through several twists and turns the reader learns that things are not quite the way our narrator led us to believe and everything crescendos in a way that (like all good thrillers) immediately makes you want to go back and read the whole book again from the start.

[Booktopia]:  Narrated with simplicity and unabashed honesty, Elizabeth Flock’s critically acclaimed New York Times bestselling novel Me & Emma is a vivid portrayal of a child’s indomitable spirit, her incredible courage and the heartbreaking loss of innocence
In many ways, Carrie Parker is like any other eight-year-old; playing make-believe, going to school, dreaming of faraway places. But even in her imagination, she can’t pretend away the hardships of her impoverished North Carolina home or protect her younger sister, Emma.
As the big sister, Carrie is determined to do anything to keep Emma safe from a life of neglect and abuse at the hands of their drunken stepfather,  abuse their momma can’t seem to see, let alone stop.it. After the sisters’ plan to run away from home unravels, Carrie’s world takes a shocking turn; and one shattering moment ultimately reveals a truth that leaves everyone reeling.

[Industry review]: “Me & Emma is really two stories in one: the page-turning events and how the reader reacts emotionally as he or she colors in the picture. I personally questioned how such young children could manage to survive this string of horrors unscathed. It is a tribute to Flock’s literary talent that she answers that silent question with her unexpected ending and without compromising the book’s complexity or tenor.”-

Finally, a look at the author of  ‘Mines in the Spinifex’.  Admittedly, I always maintained a close interest in his career, after a year as a student in his Economics History classes at the University of Melbourne, and have collected a number of his books.  The following little bio has been sourced from various publications.

Geoffrey Norman Blainey AC FAHA FASSA (born 11 March 1930) is an Australian historian, academic, philanthropist and commentator with a wide international audience. He is noted for having written authoritative texts on the economic and social history of Australia , including ‘The Tyranny of Distance’.  He has published over 35 books, including wide-ranging histories of the world and of Christianity. He has often appeared in newspapers and on television. He held chairs in economic history and history at the University of Melbourne  for over 20 years. In the 1980s, he was visiting professor of Australian Studies at Harvard University.  He received the 1988 Britannica Award for dissemination of knowledge and was made a Companion of the Order of Australia in 2000.

He was once described by Professor Graeme Davison as the “most prolific, wide-ranging, inventive, and, in the 1980s and 1990s, most controversial of Australia’s living historians”. He has been chairman or member of a wide range of Australian Government and other institutional councils, boards and committees, including the  Australia Council, the University of Ballarat, the Australia-China Council, the Commonwealth Literary Fund  and the Australian War Memorial.  He chaired the National Council for the Centenary of Federation.   His name sometimes appears in lists of the most influential Australians, past or present. The  National Trust lists Blainey as one of Australia’s “Living Treasures’  He currently serves on the boards of philanthropic bodies, including the Ian Potter Foundation  since 1991 and the Deafness Foundation Trust since 1993, and is patron of others.

Biographer  Geoffrey Bolton argues that Blainey has played multiple roles as an Australian historian:  ‘He first came to prominence in the 1950s as a pioneer in the neglected field of Australian business history…He produced during the 1960s and 1970s a number of surveys of Australian history in which explanation was organized around the exploration of the impact of the single factor (distance, mining, pre-settlement Aboriginal society)…. Blainey next turned to the rhythms of global history in the industrial period…. Because of his authority as a historian, he was increasingly in demand as a commentator on Australian public affairs’.

Educated at Ballarat High School, Blainey won a scholarship to Wesley College, before attending Melbourne University where he studied history. He worked as a freelance historical author writing mainly business histories such as The Peaks of Lyall; Gold and Paper; a History of the National Bank of Australasia; and Mines in the Spinifex. Blainey accepted a position at the University of Melbourne in 1962 in the Faculty of Economics and Commerce. He held the positions of Professor of Economic History (1968-77); Senior Lecturer 1962; and from 1977-1988 he occupied the Ernest Scott Chair of History at Melbourne University. Professor Blainey also held the chair of Australian studies at Harvard University.
Geoffrey Blainey was appointed the foundation Chancellor of the then University of Ballarat (UB) in 1993 after an illustrious career at the University of Melbourne. He was installed as UB Chancellor in December 1994 and continued until 1998. The Blainey Auditorium at the Mt Helen Campus of UB is named in his honour. Blainey, always a keen exponent of libraries and the acquisition of books, has donated part of his extensive book collection to the UB library

In 2000,.as noted above, Professor Blainey was awarded the Companion of the Order of Australia for service to academia, research and scholarship, and as a leader of public debate at the forefront of fundamental social and economic issues confronting the wider community. At that time [at UB] the University’s Vice-Chancellor Professor Kerry Cox said ‘Geoffrey Blainey guided the new and inexperienced university through its first four years with a benevolent but firm hand. This time was challenging as the university strove to make a place for itself in higher education, grappled with funding cuts and the eventual merger with neighbouring TAFE institutes. For those at the university fortunate enough to work with Geoffrey Blainey during his time as Chancellor, they witnessed first hand his humility, and we are proud of his role in our history.’

In 2002 the degree of Doctor of Letters was conferred on Professor Blainey in recognition of his contribution to the University of Ballarat and the community in general. The same year Blainey donated a collection of material to the University of Ballarat. Included in this collection are historical books, papers and other material relating to the early history of mining and the central Victorian goldfields. A second generous donation of material was received in 2005. ‘The Geoffrey Blainey Mining Collection’.

As an economic historian, Blainey challenged the conventional view, questioning accepted contemporary understandings of European settlement of Australia as a convict nation, Aboriginal land rights, and Asian immigration. He is described as a ‘courageous public intellectual, a writer with rare grace and a master storyteller’. In a reassessment of the life of Blainey, ‘The Fuss that Never Ended’ considers his ideas, his role in Australian history, politics and public life, and the controversies that surrounded him. He was always popular with students. According to the Melbourne University home page ‘When Geoffrey Blainey spoke to final-year students in the Friends of the Baillieu Library HSC Lectures in the 1970s, the Public Lecture Theatre was packed to capacity and his audience carried copies of his books to be signed, a tribute to what Geoffrey Bolton characterised as his “skills in interpreting technological change in admirably lucid narratives that appealed to both specialist and non-specialist audiences”.  Among his most popular works are the ‘The Rush that Never Ended: A History of Australian Mining’; ‘The Tyranny of Distance’; ‘A Shorter History of Australia’; ‘A Short History of the World’; and ‘The Origins of Australian Football’……………………………………………